skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> For the nuclear deterrent, the worst-case scenario was
> basically the end of the world as we know it. Either
> the USSR takes over the world, or global civilization
> is entirely wrecked. I'm not sure which one would have
> been considered worse.

I personally don't find this a difficult question. A half-destroyed world controlled by the USSR would have been far better than a full-destroyed world.
The problem with "Don't feed the trolls" [video]
1. Amazon instantaneously converts most of its USD into services and products that their suppliers and employees provide.

2. If you want to try dealing with Bitcoin, step zero is to allow people to pay in it. Then, if you happen to have more suppliers whom you can pay in BTC directly, you can keep some part of your cash in BTC. But making the first step is your competitive advantage - you already attract target audience and learn how the thing works.
"I want a language to be a tool that I can use to solve scientific and engineering problems with minimal conceptual overhead due to minding language features."

Among compiled languages, isn't that Fortran, especially since Fortran 90 on have multidimensional array operations, like Julia, Numpy, and Matlab.
Then you tell me why Google sponsors the Artificial General Intelligence conference every year ;-).
I'm a lifetime nerd and a tech startup founder. Some of my best friends work at Google, facebook, Apple, etc., but I'm very sympathetic to the folks who are angry about the situation in SF.

The industry culture in the valley is extremely insulated from the real world, and it shows in everything. At bars and cafes, the conversation is the same old echo chamber; re-affirming the world changing nature of the next Snapchat copy. In a world with so many huge problems, so many smart people exerting so much effort and spending so much of other people's money on trivial things is the rule not the exception, and it's sad (of, if it doesn't make one sad, it makes one angry). You can't escape it. It's actually one of the reasons I bought a motorhome and hit the road...I've only been back to the valley once since I left four years ago. The valley is depressing to me, for all the reasons so many find it full of optimism. I'm not optimistic when some of the brightest minds are expending their efforts on imitation of trivialities.

America is looking like a class war again for the first time in a long time. And, the folks comfortably in the middle don't realize they're siding with the folks up top, either through inaction or through conscious choice to serve those interests (even if they're only middle class by SF standards and have much more in common with poor folk than with the .1% that effectively own everything). This is why there's so much anger. San Francisco has always been expensive and most regular folk there have always been renters. But, it's becoming impossibly expensive for huge swaths of people and the hope of surviving in SF as anything other than a wealthy white (or Asian) male engineer is fading fast.

This article has some good ideas. People in the valley should get out of that echo chamber regularly and do something real in their community. Come up with something else to talk about now and then. But, I don't think it will solve the underlying problem; lower and middle class people are realizing the world isn't what they thought. The odds are simply stacked against poor folks in America (and stacked against escaping being poor), and they're worst in places like San Francisco and NYC. The churn in wealth that is supposed to happen in a market economy isn't happening anymore, if it ever did. It's been locked down hard by a very few, and the rest of us are merely renters and debtors, with no real say in the system. And, the idea I see that "they should just move" is missing the point...this problem isn't a San Francisco problem. It is nationwide, and San Francisco is just the canary. It's happening in every major city in the country.
nice. i can sleep well tonight.
Why are you so sure that was the cause of the price decline?
This is an exciting project, but as a scientist I think that the data they present to support their rather bold claims is pretty thin, so far. If they want me to invest in their startup through crowdfunding, they should at least be able to answer the following questions first:

-What exactly do they mean when they say that animal studies have been successful? Have they just conducted a proof-of-concept experiment or do they have a working vaccine for mice? If so, how effective is it (1 %, 10 % or 100 %)?

-How mature is the delivery process they intend to use? In their FAQ they mention the use of microspheres and state that "in a petri dish we have been able to induce dendritic cells to take up the microspheres through a process called phagocytosis". Again this sounds like a proof-of-concept experiment, so how mature is this technology?

-Why are there no peer-reviewed publications about their work so far? On their website they state that they're "awaiting publication in a peer-reviewed journal". Which journal did they submit their work to and why can't they publish a preprint of their article? Did they publish some theory papers about the work they did between 2011 and 2013?

If you want my money, please show me the data first :)
DAMN A MUST HEAR
China vetoed Coke buying a local beverage producer over national security concerns.
The nice thing is that there is a setting to specify where the location is if you prefer a certain implementation or host. Which I think is another example of how well designed npm is. My question is, is there a way to evolve the protocol a bit to be more practical for ensuring that multiple "central" registries are able to stay in sync? Or is the current system which is tied to Couchdb replication specifics (I think) the best way?

I agree with the general idea of separating out the concern of the metadata index from the actual hosting of the packages. I also agree that its important though to keep changes transparent and practical for people to implement on their own.

I can't help but mention one more time how interesting these issues are in relation to what I see as an inevitable move from a fundamentally server oriented network architecture for the internet to a fundamentally distributed data oriented architecture. And that change presents many challenges including how it intersects with business interests.
The "solution" will be an exodus from SF to other communities. SF has eaten itself before, and it will doubtlessly eat itself again.
Find a BBQ for Australia Day
Fed's target rate is 2%, and either way it's close. Also, you can be quite confident you will get that 3% return if the stock is flat. Much more than you can say for a 0.07%-return savings account.

You wouldn't want to put all your money into a 3% dividend stock, but as part of a larger diversification? Solid choice IMO.
But it's also determined by a lot more than a veneer of politically-correct pleasantness. I suggest that the best way to deal with such people is use the downvote button. Complaining about tone is just so much noise... it adds nothing to any discussion.
That would be worth exploring, but the cost of developing a drug is astronomically high: "The average drug developed by a major pharmaceutical company costs at least $4 billion, and it can be as much as $11 billion." http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/02/10/the-tru.... The most expensive part is Phase III Clinical Trials, and it's growing: "We examined drug development in four major public health areas and discovered that for any given drug on the market, typically 90 percent or more of that drug’s development costs are incurred in Phase III trials." http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/fda_05.htm

No university or nonprofit has that kind of budget, and even if they did, they are unlikely to take on the risk of a failed drug.
it is unlikely that QWERTY is optimal for this use case
since it certainly was never designed for this

QWERTY was designed to minimize jams on manual typewriters. You get a jam when you press two nearby keys in quick succession. This is actually extremely similar to the layout constraint swype operates under.
SEO is one of the verticals we support, and is one of the most popular ones.
The way of the program: introduction to programming as seen from the shell
It doesn't stand for something. Git provides you a derogatory word in the event it doesn't do what you want, it's a feature because you don't have to hunt for a word when you are stressed out about your code. "Stupid git" is my favorite.

If your colleague really wants it to stand for something you better think of something.
>One group that would benefit from cheap patent-free drugs is health insurers.

Um...exactly the opposite. Under the ACA "the minimum percentage of premium health plans must spend on health care is 85 percent for large groups and 80 percent for small groups and individual policyholders."

So, if an insurance company spends $65,000 on a drug, they get 65k/.85 or $76,470 in premiums, earning $11,470 in profit.

If the drug only cost $10,000 the profit would just be $1,764.

The more expensive drugs are, the more money health insurers make. Health insurers are harmed by cheap patent-free drugs.
Federal judge rules IP address is not enough to prove identity
If that happened much software would just move to the (arguably worse) service model where programs won't work offline or run on your local machine, and if the server shuts down you lose everything.
Wait... didn't we just learn that correlation != causation? :)
Sorry, to be clearer, I meant it isn't HTML.
What are the best startups in israel / tel aviv?
hi there, i am an english speaking high performer in silicon valley. i am getting the international bug and for various reasons have honed in on tel aviv.

interested in hearing thoughts about:

-is this a good idea? would the opportunity cost of leaving silicon valley high?

-ideas of startups i should consider. criteria: more interested in later stage startups that are over one or two years out, have been through a round or two of funding, and are around 50+ employees. so a small business is probably a better descriptor. re. industry wide open to possibilities. goes without saying i would want to join a fast growing one with compelling technologies.

also open to hearing strategies on how to find out. so far, have been reaching out to network and asking friends of friends who would know.

as for my skills: marketing, market research, business strategy, product management.
Couldn't take this seriously given the writer is just mad he is a Data Scientist at Facebook and not doing research at an academic powerhouse.
I think the author largely agrees with your beefs, since he's proposing this as a client-side and server-side rendering solution.

> I've thought for a long time (and blogged about it previously) that the ideal solution would fully render the markup on the server, deliver it to the client so that it can be shown to the user instantly. Then it would asynchronously load some Javascript that would attach to the rendered markup, and invisibly promote the page into a full app that can render its own markup.

That is, everything is rendered server-side for the reasons you outline, but that rendering logic also lives on the client should something need to update. This post doesn't detail exactly how to do all that, but it sounds like it's scheduled as a future topic.
Open source software is priced at $0.

Drug discovery (i.e. actual drugs; NOT just hits or lead molecules) is not as simple as pounding code on the couch in your jammies.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=google%20trends
> Until people start to feel unsafe or targeted

The implicit threat, made explicit once again -- it amazes me how blatant some people are in HN comments on this subject!
[Gastrointestinal tract](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastrointestinal_tract) or how to make crap
Deep Blue was using search-tree algorithms, not learning algorithms. Has anyone tried putting modern machine-learning engines up against professional chess players?
I've had bad experiences with this "feature" lately too - scammers can pop notifications into my phone simply by "inviting" me to events. I have no idea that anything is afoot until my phone pings me the notification.
Actually, Twitter gave up on it every performing and everything is rendered server-side.
Unless you're a lawyer or very well-versed in the UCC

Are we to understand that you are?
This is the exact thing that I am talking about in my comment at the top of the thread. These people simply don't care about this stuff, they won't let anything stop them from hating techies.
Hi, thanks for getting back to me! I didn't realize that the right swipe existed, but it's amazing! It actually solves both of my problems: now I can keep my thumbs in pretty much the same spot, which is great.

I'm using an HTC First (please don't make fun of me), which has a 4.3 inch screen.
What drove Cannarella and Spechler, two mechanical engineering Ph.D. students, to prerelease a paper about network theory and epidemiology, without coauthoring/consulting with epidemiologists or people experienced in viral communications theories, is beyond me. But the title "Debunking Princeton" seems to suggest this should be considered representative of all of the quality of research Princeton outputs, which is certainly not the case. Many posts have been made questioning the strength of the paper in question, and the fact that one with such a link-bait title is rising on HN is unfortunate in my view.

Once again, a reminder to everyone that there are no peer review requirements for papers posted to arXiv. There is no evidence that the original paper was ever accepted by any journal or conference, and not surprisingly given the speculative nature of the study, the advisor of the two Ph.D.-candidate coauthors declined to place his name on the paper. So as an institution, Princeton is no more responsible for this paper than Obama is responsible for that drink machine being broken down the hallway (thanks Obama), even though it happens to be a drink machine affiliated with his country. In that regard, with all due respect towards Mr. Develin, I'm going to have to "debunk" "Debunking Princeton."

[Full disclosure: I am a Princeton alumnus.]
> &hey doubled their surface revenue in the last quarter, they never released last year's surface revenue*

They said that Surface revenue doubled sequentially.

Sequentially means compared to the last quarter -- not the year-ago quarter.

From the earnings release:

> Surface revenue more than doubled sequentially, from $400 million in the first quarter to $893 million in the second quarter.
You're waiting for robots to take the jobs so you can tell those damn kids to get off their butts and work harder?

Do you really not perceive the logical contradiction here?
Many of these suggestions seem similar to Steve Yegge's "Effective Emacs" which I can recommend if you are a new Emacs user (or even if you've just not seen it before):

https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs

I like getting rid of toolbars and such, but still like to keep the modeline and gutters.
Predicting the Future Value of Bitcoin
> someone there was high when they came up with those prices

Yes, yes indeed.
Ask HN: Consulting work on the weekends -- what should I know to protect myself?
An old coworker has asked for help in an area I have an expertise in. I've told them I can only work on the weekends and evenings, so that it does not interfere with my current job. We'll be signing a contract -- what should I look out for? How do I properly measure time worked? How do I handle emails (do I time myself when I read and respond to emails to bill?).

Any advice is helpful, thank you.
Sorry no. They don't price things so they can recoup a fixed amount + a reasonable profit. Do you really think they say hmm we could price it a little higher and make more but we'll just stick to a reasonable profit. Likewise do you think consumers say, wow they spent a billion dollars developing this, therefore I am willing to pay them ($1 billion + 20% reasonable profit)/(total number of units sold)? That's not how supply and demand works. Drug companies price it to make the most on it regardless of any sunk costs. Why would thyley choose to make more or less money based on whether they are currently angry at India? They will always choose more or the shareholders can actually sue the board for abandoning their interests.
Sure enough there are parts of matlab where matlab is without serious competitors. I think however that a majority of needs is available for Python, although I know that I do not represent everyone's needs.

Quick google search yielded: http://networkx.github.io/ do not know how it compares though.

I switched to Sci.Python at the point where I had difficulty treating time series data with Matlab. I know there is a toolboxy-thingy from mathworks but it either was not available or I did not find the documentation. Anyway, I quickly got started with Pandas. I had prior knowledge of Python and other mainstream programming languages before.

Spyder is a Matlab-ish IDE with a variable explorer, etc. Some like the Ipython Notebook which I think is great for demonstrations and teaching, but eventually does not scale when projects grow bigger.
Surface Pros will run Ubuntu allegedly. Could make for a slick unit, although the cover keyboards don't look as good as a regular keyboard.
That's not a question that should be keeping you up at night ... but I've been wondering what the meaning of life is.
The main owner of the american company creator of the most used operated system in desktops around the world (in all countries, enemies and allies of the USA government) may not be the most trustable source in this matter. Call it "ad hominem" but let's not pretend it hasn't been this way when money and government are involved.
I'd actually say both Julia and Matlab are often quite decent on both learnability, usability (at least for their purpose -- especially as the library for Julia develops), and performance. Certainly, on par with other newly-designed languages. Sure, you can go faster with Fortran, but you can do that when you see that it is really needed...
Written by one of weev’s lawyers. Weev, the absolute cyber-douche who threatened Kathy Sierra’s family and precipitated her years-long avoidance of Internet and speaking appearances. Who absoutely deserves punishment.

If the “crackdown on hackers” were remotely like the “war on drugs”, then should we suppose weev to be analogous to a mere user of crack cocaine who was racially targeted and unfairly handed an outsized jail sentence? No. weev is no victim.
RUMOUR: NEW LARGER IPHONES ON THEIR WAY?
Why not both? Why can't we increase government funding without banning companies from doing their own research (or at least profiting from it?) It's very unlikely two labs would discover the exact same drug and then patent it so no one else can use it. And creating the maximum amount of investment in medical research seems like a good idea.
It's not as much other revenue streams than the steady business of corporate IT. When Microsoft released Vista, companies continued to deploy (and pay for) XP. When 8 didn't get the stellar reception Microsoft expected, enterprises kept on deploying Windows 7. The same goes for every version of Office, with the added "benefit" (for Microsoft) that documents created by version n are usually not compatible with version n-1, thus forcing full user base upgrades of Office (or holding Office upgrades back when it can't run on the official corporate Windows). The same also happens with servers: if your company has a dozen critical apps developed in ASP.Net, it's very likely that, when a server upgrade is due, it will be a Windows server.
> Without this "privilege" a company has no incentive to develop anything new

While that is true about companies it is not true about people. There are numerous people who do research into specific medical conditions for reasons other than money. While I'm not saying Crowley didn't make a fair shake of money with his companies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Crowley_(biotech_executive...

There was a clear motivation to save his own, and other children's lives.

Would companies stop entirely or would not for profits arise in their place?

I think it's disingenuous to imply that there is no other way that medical research could ever happen.

One also has to examine the moral dilemma faced in this situation. Respect international intellectual property laws and quite literally allow millions to die OR "steal" the drug?

Now run the dilemma again but it's your own child.

Is it right? Would you do it?

Free software movements point to the probability that software would likely still exist in a world where it was declared that all software should be priced at ${arbitrary}.

I feel like the truth is far more nuanced than you're allowing for here. There's far more than money on the line and if I were the one dying of a $65,000/year cancer I'd also struggle to respect the international laws that were willing to consign me to death if the profit on the materials was in the 99% range.
Using Amazon EC2 to mine Dogecoin
Companies are also motivated by profits. This can create a perverse incentive to focus on treatment methods and ignore prevention/cures. They might also focus more on problems that effect "rich" people (blood pressure, cholesterol, weight loss, depression) while ignoring things that kill many poor people like malaria.
love to see free software with a lot of contributors ;-)
My blog's tech stack: Pelican powered, Dokku deployed
How Sony Is Ushering In a Golden Age of Photography
The same way it did before we introduced the absurd notion that someone can own an idea. Innovation will flourish as constraints are removed and expensive stuff will shift to public funding or crowd funding rather than private funding. Rich people trying to make a killing is hardly the only place to find money these days.
I think the concern is more with working class people who have always lived in San Francisco and could now get displaced, not with how much it costs for tech workers to live there.
Pharmaceutical companies typically spend more money on advertising than drug development which leads me to think that the patent system isn't that necessary to the overall profitability.
The Target hack a month back effected my wife. Paying with bitcoin would have removed the possibility of her account being compromised shifting the burden to the retailer. All kinds of possibilities are there to mitigate that risk: cold storage wallets, third party services. Some other accounting implication off the top of my head: create a new payment address for each day, month, or year and automatically reconcile an accounts based on wallet address.

I imagine banks and other bitcoin service venders will solve the charge back issue or 3rd party arbitrators will be common with this: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_2:_Escrow_and_d...
Overseas always takes the short straw. In Brazil, the technical consultants I knew always complained about the hardware they got. Sales people got all the nice stuff.
Does sales tax apply to downloadable software in California?
Article author here: I did not entirely agree with his comment, but I included it because it made a strong, though extreme, point about the state of journalism in what he felt led to what happened with "Dr. V's Magical Putter."
No, the main factor in this is asking McDs to change their distribution from frozen patties (safer to handle and easier to work with at the kitchen level) to refrigerated raw product, which increases the risk of contamination, cross-contamination, and spoilage to extremely hazardous levels. The HAACP requirements alone would be staggering. It doesn't matter what's in the beef.