skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think people would marry today just because they love each other either. The system is setup in such a way that people often have an incentive to leave the marriage and perhaps with more women being financially independent they are just as concerned with the fallout of a marriage as compared to a good long-term relationship.
How is this HN material ?
I skipped most of the middle, but the ending did not disappoint!
I'm not sure why you would link the info graphic and not the article it came from:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html
That's what he was saying..
I think we're gonna need those erlang articles again.
Protein folding?
x is an Array (which should only accept numerics for keys). E.g. you cannot have a String be a "key" in an Array.

However, for an Object (if they used {} instead of []), the property gets converted using String() before being assigned, so you cannot have duplicate values with the same String value. This actually makes sense when you consider that JavaScript isn't a hard typed language and you often don't need to type cast (which comes in handy more often than it fails a programmer).

My opinion: this guy is complaining just to complain, he could throw a _ before that 1 String and it solves his type problem completely.
I just assumed Scooby Doo typed the title.
Horrible product? Really? Have you had much Mexican beer? It's no worse than Modelo or Tecate or Pacifico. Much, much better than Corona.
I see no problem in using "they" instead of "he" or "she."

After all, I use "we" instead of "I" all the time.
That doesn’t track for me.

Look at men in the past. It’s against men’s evolutionary nature to marry yet they still got married just as quickly (and they didn’t need wives to support them). So your argument that women are taking a role traditionally held by men before and hence aren’t marrying doesn’t seem to hold water.

Here’s the problem: The feminist narrative currently out there is a myth. It says women were always kept down and only now are rising to positions of power. But look at history and you’ll see there were women in positions of power going back thousands of years (Most pre-industrial societies gave power over a nation to the Queen if her King died first and societies like the Egyptians were ruled over by women even without men)

To me this seems like a societal misfire. It seems like the majority of women in the past wanted to stay home and take care of their family (as evolutions suggests they do). Then that became their accepted role and the minority who didn’t want that felt trapped in their circumstance. They became the original feminists and rightfully won the ability to do whatever they want. Then the next generation feminists developed some kind of resentment towards women who did stay at home and attacked them. So now we have a society that has forgotten how valuable housewives were and in doing so has created a value system in which women who want to be housewives are told their inferior to those who don’t. But the housewives were the ones who were driving most men to get married.

So with women feeling they’d be inferior to want to be married with a family and men screwing everything that moves (as evolution has taught them to do) we have a society where no one’s pushing marriage (and I think we’re worse off for it)
This is the danger of syntax minimalism; using the same operator to refer to elements of both arrays and dictionaries.

Perl has implicit type conversions similar to those of JavaScript, but the syntax of the dereference operation makes it clear what's going on:

$array[$number] $array[0] $array['0']
$hash{$key} $hash{'42'} $hash{42}

Even without the obvious variable names, you can tell from the syntax what is going to be converted to a number and what is going to be converted to a string; [] means number and {} means string.

Javascript is stuck with the same syntax for both:

array[number] array[42] array["42"]
hash[key] hash[42] hash["42"]

which is apparently somewhat confusing. I know what is going to happen, but the language doesn't help me; it's easy to write code that's misleading.
Read a book on javascript.

"Javascript: The definitive guide" by O'Reily is the best.

This is not a quirk, Arrays are just objects with a special property 'length' which is set to the highest key that can be converted to an integer, plus one, and the array functions. All keys are however, strings, as with all objects.

For example,

var arr = [];
arr.foo = "hello";
arr["hello"] = function() {};
arr[40] = 56;
// arr.length = 41

It's much easier when you understand that arrays in javascript don't exist as a separate data type. They are, as I say, just objects with a couple of convenience methods+length property.
What's the best first language to learn for a programmer?
I'd recommend "Javascript: The definitive guide" O'Reily far more. "The good parts" isn't really a full language spec. It's an interesting read, but not as useful IMHO
"they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs"

They sound rather crazy... perhaps I am misreading the implication?
This landed with a thus the first time you submitted it:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=722189

Why the repost?
Moving by bike
Follow the money: Bailout tracker
If I add a widget with the titles and the teasers of your posts on my website - technically - I'm not copying anything.

This is what syndication is for. I choose what to syndicate, to add value to my website. And you gain exposure from appearing on many different websites. That's why most publish just a teaser of each post and not the full body.

Again, I'm not arguing about what is right (or fair) and what is wrong. I'm just saying that the protocol has been developed for this use.
List of games in game theory
That's a pretty warped depiction of 'the feminist narrative,' and in any case exceptions don't make the rule.

In California, in the 1850's, for example, it was determined that any property of a married woman's was legally the property of her husband. Therefore the hundreds of entrepreneurial and successful women land or business owners were suddenly rendered legally and financially dependent on their husbands. Only single women and widowers could hold property.

In case you're ever interested in investigating your assumptions about man's evolutionary nature, I highly suggest you read Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography.
Most interesting:

guess 2/3 of average: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_2/3_of_the_average

pirate game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_game

dollar auction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction

Most common/well-known:

prisoner dilemma: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

chicken: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_chicken

battle of the sexes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_sexes_(game_theor...

El Farol bar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Farol_bar_problem
Please, see my answer to the comment below.
Sorry, but that's wrong. I don't think there's any ambiguity at all. JS only has string keys, and only has objects.

An array in js is just an object/dictionary, with a special 'length' property, and a few convenience methods.

Further, the 'length' property can also be confusing to newcomers, since it doesn't relate to the number of elements in the array, rather the maximum key that can be converted to an integer +1.

For example,

var arr = [];
arr.foo = "hello";
arr[4] = 56;

// arr.length = 5

It's much easier when you understand that arrays in javascript don't really exist as a separate data type. They are, as I say, just objects with a couple of convenience methods+length property.
I used [] because I hoped it would correctly handle number indices. But, I originally used {}. The auto-stringification of the keys was my complaint.
Another view at the same project, courtesy of Daily WTF:

By my third interview, I finally got the hang of things:
I quietly sat while the interviewer read my résumé for
the first time and then listened to him talk about his
exciting computing project. While I can’t remember what
his project was, I do remember what his response was to
my question about its application in science or business:
"errr, I’m not sure; I guess I don’t really understand
why you’d ask that."

As you can guess this person wasn't hired.

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Thinking-Machines.aspx
A military contractor repays Pentagon after China hacked its security systems
Ask HN: Do you aggregate your social networks/what do you use?
With new social sites cropping up and more information to manage in more places, how do you deal with the social sites you are a member of? Do you visit individually? Or do you manage them using a third party app (web or desktop) to aggregate and connect with your friends/followers? If you could design a service to bring your profiles together what would it do?
My life online made me find people with the same interests as me, no matter how rare. Chances of finding another person interested in say, synthesizers or ocaml letting 'fleshspace' serendipity do the work are negligible.

One other thing: Having an active social life can be costly, both online and offline. It's just that offline more people actually do it.

The equivalent of following hundreds of people on twitter and facebook in 'fleshspace' is to live in a house with guests (and flatmates) changing constantly. There are other situations in which one is forced to be hypersocial (maybe working at a bar? but that doesn't lead to intimacy), but this one I know first-hand. As anyone who has done the house thing can attest, it can be draining. You spread your attention to others very thin. And even so, the chances of meeting people you really like are not very high.
Am I the only one looking forward to this?
All keys are strings :/

What you're complaining about is similar to complaining that

"hello " + 3 + " world" == "hello " + "3" + " world"
I get the impression you don't know JS any better than I do.

[] and {} seem to be identical, except that [] one auto-increments a key-as-string in its initialization syntax.

Yes, an _ before the string would fix that particular interactive session, but it's not going to work in general.
The one from Motorola does not run on Linux.
It is a reasonable concern - the foundation of our economy is built around labor being rewarded with recompense which in turn is used to drive the services and consumer goods economy.

Robots don't consume services or goods - all they require is manufacturing and maintenance. What happens when your gas station needs fewer employees because everything involved in pumping and payment is automated (as many are in California). What happens when checkouts are all automated (Starting to Happen in Home Depot, Walmart, others..)

The answer, of course, is that people move up the feeding chain in employment, and are freed from such low level positions as technology improves - But, and here is the catch, as technology improves, the low-water mark may, in fact, start to rise above where people are capable of competing with technological solutions - then what happens?

Imaging a world in which Fast Food Restaurants, Grocery Stores, and Gas Stations were all 95%+ Automated. That may happen within the next 10 years. What are the new jobs for those people? What happens when Taxis, Trains, and Buses are automated (Skytrain in Vancouver, BC has had no drivers on their trains during normal circumstances for 20+ years)?

There will always (in my lifetime) be Jobs that technology won't be able to replace, but there are many, many, many jobs that are going to disappear.

We need to consider the consequences.
"Dog! I will sue you."

I think someone at the AP had drinks with someone at the RIAA and they decided the best idea would be to leap off a bridge, together.
Considering TC being on the frontpage of HN every two days or so, this might be of interest to the HN community.
You're not the only one looking forward to this.

I welcome the day when software are not only living, but also sentinment.

Alas, we're only limited to crafting software system into never needing rebooting while software system are being modified on the fly.
Ironically, there appears to be no version of this for any free, open-source OS, such as Linux, for building apps for the free, open-source Android platform.
So 'they' was used for centuries as a singular pronoun?!

I've been objecting to that usage for a long time.

I learned something here.
Of course robots will take jobs from human beings.

Have you ever seen a BMW factory? - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vRg64HX5gA

Is it a bad thing to have dumb jobs done by machines?

I'm always amused when I read "stop making progress, there are some risks!". Of course there are, duh.

As for singularity I think it's an overrated theory. Some solutions are not just a question of intelligence. As if "intelligence" was the solution to everything.... You also need resources, time and luck.
He is the larger than life fictional character that we sarcastically refer to Chuck Norris as.
The Bingo Bin
Yes. As long as there are people who can do each thing that needs to be done, we don't care what the ratio is.
T.Boone's mistake was backing McCain in the presidential election. I lost trust in him when he was willing to back policies that were polar opposite to what he claims to be in favor of.
How is my view "warped" when nothing you said contradicts it. What I said was that women initially chose the role of home maker and then it became their accepted role and that was a problem. I specifically said...

"They became the original feminists and rightfully won the ability to do whatever they want."

The reason I brought up the feminist narrative is because the lie of "women were never in power" allows them to claim women would never choose to be a housewife which in turn allows them to claim it's somehow an inferior way to live one's life.

As for the book, I will check it out. But there is a view of male nature accepted by the majority of the scientific community and that's what I was quoting.
So...? We need a progress report!
The transition is indeed going to be painful for a lot of people.
Israel for the most part (then again the Negav Desert is 1/3 of Israel) is not exceptionally hot and sunny. But Israel does have an exceptional motivation to be energy independent. It is a county in the middle east with no oil surrounded by political enemies with oil. When there is a will and that will is backed by cost, there is a way.
Jobs are a signal of needs. If all production jobs are eliminated than that is a good thing. It clearly mean the end of scarcity as we know it. Economic as we know it would largely disappear.

If that happens, we humans can just relax and enjoy life as it is. Sucking the system's resourcewhile robots produce ever more stuff for us to consume.

Jobs are not the end to itself. Rather, they are signals that tells us the demands of individuals in a world of scarce input. If robots multiply that input until it reach a level where humans cannot possibly consume all for many years, than it is a good thing.
When it comes to intelligent nonhuman organisms, the question seems to be: dominate or cooperate?
i've heard about this practice of traders "front running" a client's large trades to that will move the market quite a few times, and the story is almost always followed by something like "and now he's run off to {insert somehwere low-key and nice} and bought a boat"
For Mozilla and Google,  Group Hugs Are Getting Tricky
Virus makers strike social sites, but "less than 1%" Facebook users ever hit
No, Microsoft has already written the software. Today we mostly depend on Microsoft not rewriting the software too badly (and we may not be in luck).
I think I agree with jrockway. I understand (now) that there's only string keys in objects, but that's the random part. Why have [] syntax for "arrays" then? It's the hashing behaviour that's the 'gotcha'.

Sure, x.a should stringize 'a' to make property access work cleanly, but why when using the indexing syntax?

For example:

sgraham@gerard:~$ lua
Lua 5.1.4 Copyright (C) 1994-2008 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
> a = {}
> a[0] = "wee"
> a[1] = "waa"
> a["1"] = "str"
> print(a[0])
wee
> print(a[1])
waa
> print(a["1"])
str
>
> a["x"] = "wee"
> a.x = "waa"
> print(a["x"])
waa
> print(a.x)
waa
>

which seems wholly more reasonable.
Marshall Brain's "Robotic Nation" explores this in some detail:

http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

His own view seems to be summed up as:

The conventional wisdom says that the economy will create 50 million new jobs to absorb all the unemployed people, but that raises two important questions:

- What will those new jobs be?

They won't be in manufacturing -- robots will hold all the manufacturing jobs. They won't be in the service sector (where most new
jobs are now) -- robots will work in all the restaurants
and retail stores. They won't be in transportation --
robots will be driving everything. They won't be in
security (robotic police, robotic firefighters), the
military (robotic soldiers), entertainment (robotic
actors), medicine (robotic doctors, nurses, pharmacists,
counselors), construction (robotic construction workers),
aviation (robotic pilots, robotic air traffic controllers),
office work (robotic receptionists, call centers and
managers), research (robotic scientists), education
(robotic teachers and computer-based training), programming
or engineering (outsourced to India at one-tenth the cost),
farming (robotic agricultural machinery), etc. We are
assuming that the economy is going to invent an entirely
new category of employment that will absorb half of the
working population.

- Why isn't the economy creating those new jobs now?

Today there are millions of unemployed people. There are
also tens of millions of people who would gladly abandon
their minimum wage jobs scrubbing toilets, flipping
burgers, driving trucks and shelving inventory for
something better. This imaginary new category of employment
does not hinge on technology -- it is going to employ
people, after all, in massive numbers -- it is going to
employ half of today's working population. Why don't we see
any evidence of this new category of jobs today?

Although I think he goes a bit overboard in some cases (robotic actors?), I still find this to be rather persuasive.
Maybe I am overly optimistic about human intelligence, but I don't really see a "low water mark", at least in a practical sense -- certainly not anytime soon.

There will always be a "least skilled job" in the employment hierarchy. By the time our society reaches a level at which its lowest form of employment exceeds the capabilities of our current checkout clerks and fast food workers, staying alive will likely require very little in the way of monetary resources.
In the Future, the Cost of Education will be Zero
Luck is a myth, and you can waive the need for time with better hardware.
Awesome post. I think I upvoted every comment too.
Based on a quick glance at the data here:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/states/hf.jsp?incfile=sep_sum/pl...

Florida, Texas, and California seem to be the leaders of the energy-use pack by a large margin (making up ~25% of the nation's energy consumption).

In my mind those three are the sunniest of states, leading me to the very unscientific conclusion that most energy IS consumed in dry/sunny places.
>> Why have [] syntax for "arrays"

[] syntax is for objects and arrays. As I've said, an array is just an object... Same data type.

If you didn't have a [] syntax, you wouldn't be able to use a variable to reference properties on an object.

var baz = "foo";
foo.bar == foo["bar"] == foo[baz]
All Mexican beer is bad. It isn't their forte.
There will be the time when mankind stops to exist. The only question is: Will we exterminate ourselves or will we transform ourselves into something greater?
Target IE6 and IE7 with only 1 extra character in your CSS
Danny Hillis' PhD thesis (MIT 1988) on the Connection Machine: http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/14719
true enough, buts its quite different if it is wedded to the image.
I like how science can be automated but programming needs to be outsourced to India.
Trader Joe's manages to offer some very affordable beer that is higher quality than Dos Equis.
I was going to flag it, but Arrington being trolled by one of his employees is rather funny.
Wine + bottle trick = free crossover office
I'm assuming many newspapers are among those top sites.
[] creates an Array (a special instance of an Object which has a completely different prototype). {} creates an Object with no special methods except ones that apply to all types in JavaScript. I'm pretty good at JS - I swear.

In general, most don't use the same String value for a key/index to store different values. Just my opinion on that one, though.

Oh, and: you can use Firebug to effectively see the difference between the two.

>>> x = ["1"];
["1"]
>>> x = {"1": "1"};
Object 1=1
i am currently mostly visiting them once in a while except a few which i visit regularly.

Besides that can any buddy suggest me any desktop application for such <- avoid suggesting flock coz i don't like it.
>> "x is an Array (which should only accept numerics for keys). E.g. you cannot have a String be a "key" in an Array."

False. You can have anything you want in an Array, since it's just an object.

var arr = [];
arr["hello"] = 57;
arr.world = function() {};
arr[999.99] = "flibble!";
arr[54] = 9;
// arr.length now equals 55

May or may not be a good coding style, but that's a separate matter.
"Context-free grammars... are a reinvention of a technique first used by ancient Indian grammarians... They were reinvented by Noam Chomsky... and independently by John Backus for the analysis of Algol-58 syntax." (Russell & Norvig 2nd edition p. 827)

I generally squint at claims like "without so-and-so, X would not exist". Independent invention is so common it's the opposite that's surprising. Chomsky did make statistical techniques unfashionable in NLP for a few decades.
This one was awkward:

Likewise, calling Arrington names or making cheap innuendo about Lacy became boring before it even started, not just because either of them, or every other TechCrunch contributor past and present, could write and report you little punks under the table.
The results of complexity theory heavily suggest that automated science and automated engineering are impossible.
The quality of comments on the Internet is usually directly related to the tone of the original content. If the content is sensationalistic, antagonistic, or snarky you're going to see it reflected in the comments. Sites like TechCrunch, Engadget, Digg, etc show this in action. Then you have a site like HN that is still devoted to serious content where the signal-to-noise ratio for comments is very good.
A comment I left on Aaron's site as well.

I found the link to Pomodoro technique on some website. I was really glad I saw it. Google for ‘pomodoro technique’ if you are interested. If you liked Aaron’s post, you’ll definitely like this technique.
It’s against men’s evolutionary nature to marry yet they still got married just as quickly (and they didn’t need wives to support them).

Actually, as I understand it, current evo-psych holds that men (and women) have dual evolutionary strategies. One, as you imply, is to play the field as widely as possible. But the other is to invest one's energy in a single woman/family in order to increase the chances for a particular set of offspring. (Note, it's possible adopt these simultaneously if you, say, have a wife and mistresses on the side.)

I first read this in Robert Wright's "The Moral Animal," where he argues that the institution of monogamy actually benefits poor/lower status men the most.
None of Israel's direct neighbors is even close to being a significant oil producer - those are mostly in the Arabian peninsula.
Well that explains why I always found the daily show/colbert report taped interviews so awkward.