skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You can look at the data, but you can't conclude much from it; those numbers are not comparable to each other.

From 2008: http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-doctor-is-in-infant-mortality-co...

Some (OK, rather extensive) points from the link:

> In the United States, all infants who show signs of life at birth (take a breath, move voluntarily, have a heartbeat) are considered alive.

> In Belgium and France — in fact, in most European Union countries — any baby born before 26 weeks gestation is not considered alive and therefore does not “count” against reported infant mortality rates.

The baby at issue here would have been just under 22 weeks. (France changed their standard in 2008-2009; their page defining stillbirth ( http://www.insee.fr/en/methodes/default.asp?page=definitions... ) now includes a warning that French numbers cannot be compared to other European neonatal mortality numbers, so it seems safe to assume the rest of Europe has carried on as before.)

> According to the way statistics are calculated in Canada, Germany, and Austria, a premature baby weighing <500g is not considered a living child.

The article baby weighed well over 500g. But this is quite relevant to the question of who has better neonatal mortality.

> In Switzerland and other parts of Europe, a baby born who is less than 30 centimeters long is not counted as a live birth. Therefore, unlike in the U.S., such high-risk infants cannot affect Swiss infant mortality rates.

This baby's length is not reported, so this is of questionable relevance to this particular baby. But, again, it remains very relevant to the question of "do countries like Finland, France, and Cuba have better neonatal mortality than the US?"

> If a child in Hong Kong or Japan is born alive but dies within the first 24 hours of birth, he or she is reported as a “miscarriage” and does not affect the country’s reported infant mortality rates.

This could be a non-premature, 8-pound baby!

> Efforts to salvage these tiny babies reflect this classification. Since 2000, 42 of the world’s 52 surviving babies weighing less than 400g (0.9 lbs.) were born in the United States.

Still think "USD-tinted healthcare analytics" biases you against saving premature babies?

Full disclosure: I'm with your parent; I consider spending so much pumping life into these very premature "babies" a self-aggrandizing waste of time, effort, and money. But your comment seems to be grotesquely misinformed.
Uncovering the drivers of honey bee colony declines and losses
Small companies are much more like families than like work projects. There is a lot to be said for this. I would be a bit careful about engineering to stressful a situation at first, often with much less stress you can get hints at what the response will be and test those. Full on stress can bring out things you don't expect so you need a good backup.

At a former job we hired a person I knew from a former company into a job that was too stressful for them and it brought out some addiction issues the employee felt they had conquered. Turns out not so much. It was challenging but we got the employee help and back into a stable situation, but it was not the experience we had expected or planned for.
It's a matter of taste.

Flappy feels very polished, like if the tap caused him to lift even a pixel higher it wouldn't be as good of a game. This sort of thing doesn't come elegantly, but generally requires a lot of tuning of little variables and ends up farting a bunch of magic numbers all over your programs.

A game like Flappy seems like it should make a good demo app since it's simple, but it actually makes a terrible demo app since the "simple version" is so terrible that you almost feel like you should blame the platform.
Hi Sheff,
I'm Martin, co-founder of PullReview. I'm interested in understanding why the SaaS is not a good solution for you. Is it because you are not using GitHub (or any other online forge)?

Thanks for your interest anyway.

Martin
Just for the Health of It A parody – where laughter truly is medicine
It really amazes me that Unix has not only lasted so long, but actually increased in its relevance (being the foundation behind Android, iPhone, OS X, AWS, etc.) How many computing technologies from 1969 are we still in daily contact with?

Nassim Taleb has this nice heuristic that says that the expected future life of something is proportional to how long it's been around.

So ASCII text will outlast HTML, because it preceded it. And HTML will outlast JavaScript.

So you might guess that Unix will outlast even the web. I doubt that a deep knowledge of Unix will become obsolete in the lifetime of anyone alive today. We might ubiquitous computing and networked sensors and AI, but it seems like all of those things will be running on Unix.

(note: this is of course a heuristic)
Seriously, please keep the NSA comments to NSA articles. I know the NSA issue is important, but yammering on about it in every article is the same as a Bible-bashing Christian raising the topic of Jesus in every single conversation.

And I am Christian, and I do think the NSA issue is important.
I am 100% positive this was just an exercise for the developer, not an attempt at getting people to actually play his clone. It also gives code for people who wonder what goes into making a game like Flappy Bird, which I have been asked twice in the last week by people who don't code for some reason.
What was "unfair"?
WordPress (PHP, JS, SQL).

WordPress powers over 20% of the internet, is used by over half of the top 100 sites in the world, Fortune 500's use it, and the government uses it (i.e. http://www.data.gov). There are some stats here: http://en.wordpress.com/stats/ but these estimates are low because all sites aren't tracked.

Despite being around for over 10 years now, it's still growing rapidly. It's widely underestimated and often derided by other developers, but it's the most popular CMS in the world and evolving into an app framework. In the WordPress community devs are the minority, as most are designers, bloggers, hobbyists, or typical users.

Don't follow the stock market strategy of chasing the hot stocks, look at value. Remember last year when Apple's stock dipped into the $300's? That's how WordPress is: great fundamentals, massive loyal customers base, and highly undervalued.
Somebody made a project they were proud of. Some other people liked it and upvoted it.

Your attitude is why the creator of Flappy Bird took the game down in the first place.

If you don't like a submission, flag and move on.
Really, Peters response is wrong, fracking apps are there for anyone to take.

But as you take him as if has written the Bible and take all of his words as The Truth it is just a waste of time trying to argue.

If at least he knew just a little of Android perhaps he would write something that it is not utterly wrong
>A well-taught computer science course will not force anyone to rote-learn algorithms.

Agree but with the correction that you mean well-structured computer science course. The UK national A-level syllabus for "Decision 1", that which is under discussion, largely demands rote-learning for the examination. To avoid this, for whatever reason, would be very poor teaching.

There are structural deficiencies here, which teaching cannot overcome. (Also worth noting that this is part of the HS maths course, and mathematics teachers are typically not knowledgeable enough to offer the flavour you demand)

> Instead it ought to walk the students through the discovery process of improving from a naive but simple bubble sort, through more complicated algorithms.

Bubblesort is not naive and simple. Given the opportunity to invent a sorting algorithm from scratch, as a total beginner or as an expert, nobody would spontaneously suggest bubblesort in 2013.

Here is a more complete criticism of using bubblesort as an educational tool: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~ola/papers/bubble.pdf

If you open your course with bubblesort, it's my belief that a lot of capable students are going to be thinking "why did we start here? => computer science is not for me".

Overall, I agree with your teaching method - but bubblesort to quicksort is the wrong route. If sorting algorithms are introduced (I don't think it is a good start point), insertion/selection sort to bucket sort would be more pedagogical. The start point more closely matches students' naive understanding, and the end point forces teachers to be more clear about what the key learning points are.
we bought the drone.io domain name back before Drones were all over the news. We thought this definition of Drone, "a unit which takes commands from a primary source" made sense for a cloud-based CI solution.
I agree with your parent and thus don't want you in charge of "running the medical system," either. But we don't have to have one or the other. You buy your insurance policy that covers whatever it takes to save your fetus and I'll buy my policy that doesn't (and spend the difference on improving the lives of my healthy children).
You didn't lose your data!

I've been dealing with backups a fair bit recently, using Obnam over SSH. It starts to induce paranoia at a certain point, with concerns over your safest backup drive failing, so you save to a third and so on... it's hard drives all the way down.

They usually say Dropbox etc. isn't a backup solution, but I suppose it would have saved you here if it didn't sync from elsewhere.

Finally, use a friend to proofread next time - I'm a linguist so like a challenge, but not everybody does :)
Thanks to both of you for responding. I will need to read more to understand in detail, but you have at least given me some pointers.
Off, but still WAY better than the original.
0.0015 BITCOIN?! ... for Keurig coffee?

I'm sorry but I'm not spending more in bitcoin on mere Keurig coffee than an amount I might be able to GPU mine with a spare laptop in a weekend.
The government should get out of the way so Google and others can happily collude on keeping salaries down and work merrily on other shenanigans (privacy?, lol).
Because availability of the source without conditions is the only way you can get effective independent audit. It's not a magic wand, but you're relying much more on trust without it. This, on top of many-eyes and the pressure not to rely on secrecy of the source for security (a bad practice) improve the situation substantially. Even so, nothing will be perfect, of course.
Flappy Bird has been deleted from the app store
> contemplate the possibility that human lives are worth saving.

Here fucking here.

What do we want to accomplish with the most advanced civilization history has ever seen? Advertising? A flourishing human condition? Fart apps? All? None? Anarchic meritocracy? It's all on the table.
how many confirmations would this wait for before dispensing? i.e. how long does it take from me paying for the coffee before I get it?
Are you tempted to add a lot of source code comments, because this is an educational project?
Maybe am I too big nerd, but who would send laptop for repairs without wiping out harddrive first?
it's a "directory" of deals and offers for startups and small businesses.
It really depends on your skills, but I'd think about sales and/or biz-dev positions. Why?

--Sales is a huge value-add to most companies (whether a five-person startup or a Fortune 500 co.). You're responsible for revenue, which is something that most companies will want lots of at some point or another.

--Because you're responsible for revenue, you can personally make lots of money. In SF, a good salesperson (even at a startup) can easily make $75-125k/yr in their first year or two. If you go to a larger company, have specialized experience, or are exceptional at sales, it's not uncommon to be making $150-200k+/yr after a couple years.

--Arguably, even more important than the financial benefits, you'll learn a ton about business. Even if you don't see yourself becoming a career salesperson, it's a great base to launch a career in operations, account management, strategic partnerships, revenue/sales management, or to become a CEO/COO/CRO of your own company someday. Sales is valuable because every company has to do it - whether pitching investors, negotiating a contract, selling SaaS products, partnering with other companies, etc. It's all sales on some level.

Feel free to email me if you'd like to discuss further. Happy to chat with any non-technical folks on HN about career options or opportunities. More info and my email is in my profile.

Good luck!
"Just one example: Linux (a) dominates the Internet's servers and (b) is open-source."

...and untold millions of lines of changes to the Linux kernel are kept secret and are not at all available to other Linux users or even to Linux contributors. That is exactly the sort of the thing the GPL was meant to prevent.

Furthermore, while it is true that quite a bit of web services and "cloud computing" was built with free software, the effect is very different than distributing free software on desktops. If you do not like some new feature of the Linux kernel, you can just not use it -- nobody forces you to upgrade, and in extreme cases it is possible to fork the project. On the other hand, if you do not like a new feature in Facebook...tough luck, you have no authority. Similarly, if you want a new feature in the Linux kernel, you can add it -- maybe Linus won't merge it with the official source, but you can still have the feature and distribute it to others. Your next great idea for a GMail feature is irrelevant, because you cannot add features to GMail.
Learn computer science and you'll know what's coming (Though not the exact form) over the next 30-40 years. Maybe even longer.

For those who were paying attention in language classes it's a game of waiting for industry to catch up. A long one at that.
Tests would be good, too.
1. Open APIs that allow useful, meaningful, and complete interoperability between different services

Also: competition. A lot of people only put up with things Facebook, Google, and Apple get up to because they feel there's no viable alternative that meets their needs. A climate that fosters competition better will encourage upstarts.
She's a Star Trek character that died a few times.
> (and it's not like a spec relating the max energy/time is going to help most shoppers

Actually, speakers are speced in terms of RMS wattage...which is exactly that.
Bitbucket integration should land this week. We open sourced our Go Bitbucket API which was the first step:
https://github.com/drone/go-bitbucket

There is also a thread going for adding other sources:
https://github.com/drone/drone/issues/10

It took about 24 hours for a GitHub enterprise patch to land, so I'm sure we'll support many other options pretty quickly.
I gave you an example. Mothers uncertain of their ability to raise an infant will abandon it to die (this is traditionally called "exposure"). It's a practice at least as old as humanity. And it conclusively demonstrates that the demand for infant care is not inelastic; these mothers aren't killing themselves trying to preserve their nonviable children. Rather, they're killing the children so that they don't die themselves in the effort to save a doomed child.
Man who makes 12 million a year decries outlandish million dollar spending to save child's life. The guy is absolute scum.
Can anyone explain why the dev did so?
But it's sold to payers of premiums as protection against outliers. And if it's sold as such, but isn't really, then it's fraud. Let a hundred lawsuits bloom.
Thanks for the repost, I haven't read this before and found it quite good.
fwiw: I discovered a strategy that works for me: don't look at the bird, but look to the top right of it. I got 21 and 20 in a row, after getting a high score of just 5 before switching to this strategy.
Ah, Americans talking about social security. As if they have ever experienced the thing...
There's just no way spending a million dollars to raise a fetus up to the age of zero passes any kind of cost-benefit analysis

If you look at the cost in dollars per QALY, it's not that bad. That million dollar treatment probably produces 40 QALYs, for a cost of $25,000 per QALY; Americans typically pay $50-100k per QALY.
I just read "Hell is the Absence of God". I just can't understand or relate at all to the "slave morality", as Nietzsche might put it, of that story, or wrap my head around why people choose to worship a creature roughly equivalent to the one imprisoned at the center of the galaxy in Star Trek V.
I never heard of that term "Survivorship Bias" but I like it. My real point (that I make towards the end) is not that we can follow the path of people like JK and Branson, but that we continue to believe in ourselves.

I do believe writers can learn from her story, entrepreneurs can learn from Branson, just as investors can learn from Buffet...
Agreed, the point of 'any' company is to enrich the stockholders.

I was more saying the point of insurance in general to those buying the insurance is to protect against outliers.

Not debating the point that insurance companies are there to make a profit rather than to service people. Agree with what you're saying but it doesn't address what I was asking.

Edit: Also since AOL 'self insured' there wasn't an insurance company at the heart. AOL just decided to cut corners and 'put away money for a rainy day', and was shortsighted on how much to put away, to put it simply
>While the stereotypes are false

They are not really false. Black people ARE poor in statistically significant amounts, women ARE treated as housewives, etc.
Insurance companies re-insure. Can't a self-insured company do the same? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinsurance
Which version: iOS or Android? Seems perfect on Android.
Just in case the author is reading, change the fucking word placement please.
Let's say you are a workaday programmer doing something like database-driven apps for enterprises. You used to build terminal-based apps. Then you moved to GUI apps. Now you are doing web-based apps. All of it covers a good 30 years of change. How would computer science have informed you about those changes?
> ...and untold millions of lines of changes to the Linux kernel are kept secret and are not at all available to other Linux users or even to Linux contributors

Kept secret by whom?
Kettle: I had one with the same problem. That's a terminal failure to me...
That NBC (Sochi Hacking) story 100% fraudulent
A minor point:

> We as a society have more than enough wealth to give ICU care to every infant that needs it.

I'm not particularly informed here, but this is a claim I'm willing to accept.

> Our medical system is what makes it expensive.

This isn't right. Giving intensive care to extremely premature infants is inherently expensive, in much the same way that mining is expensive because you have to move tons and tons of dirt. It's difficult, and it requires a very large quantity of dedicated resources; it will not be cheap at any point in the foreseeable future no matter what organizational changes we make. We'd need technological changes.
At some point you'd run out of organs to sell, and the child still might die, sad as that may be. :/
>One could also argue that your examples of crass humor normalize these stereotypes, and therefore perpetuate them.

There is an external world were jokes are based on. The external world CAN change and jokes can change with it.

Thinking that jokes "perpetuate" what's happening in the external world is like thinking that movies, songs or video games do.

I don't see all the racist pre-Civil war jokes preventing the end of slavery. Or blackface preventing the civil rights movement.
dammit, when did trolls like this make their way to HN?
It wasn't the only reason, sure, but it has been a contributing factor to me resigning that I couldn't bear to make the management any richer...
Thanks, that all makes sense to me. I've got a couple of side projects that I am working on now, none of which are live yet though. And I appreciate the invitation, would it be fine if I contacted you through fitspot? assuming you are the email in the FAQ?
This is neat. It reminds me of being on college campuses where students have created new paths through grass bypassing sidewalks and paved paths. I always thought the worn paths should be incorporated into the "official" infrastructure somehow.
It's not super recent, but this paper discusses attitudes in the U.S.:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/120/3/519.full...

It sounds like 23 weeks and 500 grams are (were in 2007?) important benchmarks.
Don't confuse the strategies :-) Small liberal arts school has a strategy of broad based understanding of theory and the 'art', with graduate school providing the nuts and bolts specialization, large engineering school (USC) has the strategy of maximally skilled in execution of the art with enough theory to be effective. USC will assume that you will go to work right after you get your 4 year degree, Lewis and Clark may be assuming you're going to have at least another 2 years of work on your master's degree to get those bits in order.

In my experience, learning how the computer worked made it easier for me to learn to program it. My wife, was much more an algorithmic thinker and could care less if this variable was in a register or not, and focused on how things flowed through the program. I think they are both valid approaches.
Calm the f*k down. He created a nearly identical open source clone of a very popular game for you. If you want to make it perfect, do it yourself. He's done 99% of the work for you. Stop being such an entitled brat.
I don't think he is utterly wrong, he gave pretty good arguments, and many concur with him.
Cocky Boy Blocks Peoples' Way on Streets Funny
After they're programmed for 20+ years in the language, and with them considered job offers or projects based on the language use, when exactly it's not considered "married"?
There is infinite arm-chair teaching going on regarding coding/programming/computer science right now. If anyone is tempted to do more, fine. But please, please, read up on what people actually doing it have discovered. Reality quickly upends assumptions when you try to teach.
> Thats what limiters are for.

Limiters cannot either distinguish or protect against the technical difference between a sine wave and a square wave:

http://i.imgur.com/oE5NFZ9.png

The red trace is a normal audio signal that doesn't exceed the dynamic range of the amplifier. The green trace is an example of the kind of signal one gets by turning the volume up way above normal.

In a hypothetical speaker of one ohm and a peak voltage of one volt, the red trace has a time-averaged power level of 1/2 watt. The green trace has a power level of one watt -- twice as high, and possibly too high for the speakers to tolerate.

> Speakers/amps should have DC protection builtin.

This example should show that this isn't possible without taking the temperature of the speaker's activation coil -- and even that might not work.
Excellent - thanks for the info. I am more than ready to relieve Mr. Jenkins of his duties.
By the people who made the changes but never had to release them, by NDAs that people sign before they work for web companies, etc. There is nothing in the GPLv2 that says, "All your changes must be released." What it says is that if you give a modified version to another person, your changes must be GPL'd also. Since web companies do not give modified versions of the kernel to others, they are not in any way obligated to make their changes available to others, and more often than not they do not make those changes available.
This... sounds so very spot on. I really enjoyed the article and think it's quite excellent.
If you had government mandated "socialised" health care like the majority of the developed world, the actual cost to provide health care would have been nowhere near as much.

I cannot fathom that people accept "12 to 18 $K" as a reasonable amount of money for health care.
note that you can open source part of your code, and keep other parts private -- many companies are quite comfortable exposing the user-facing parts of their system without explaining all of the backend