skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't like all this talk of risk and death. While it's true that more accidents happen with small GA aircraft, it isn't really the dangerous activity non-fliers make it out to be. When accidents do occur, it's almost always due to some very poor decisions made on the part of the pilot - taking off over wight, bad weather/icing, shoddy maintenance, etc.

I started out with GA flying and later became a flight instructor, then moved on to flying small turboprops (into some very treacherous airports), and now fly jets with an airline. I've never known anyone personally who has been killed or injured in an aircraft accident. Even flying for an airline, I'm baffled by the sense of danger some passengers feel by going up in a large jet.

Here's a startup that's trying to reverse the decline of GA flying - OpenAirplane.com. They launched last year and have caught on pretty quickly. It's a universal rental checkout for GA pilots, such as the OP. Get checked out in, say, a Cessna 172 in Detroit, and you're set to rent a similar Cessna 172 in Florida. The requirement for a checkout at each operator from which one wants to rent can be a roadblock for would-be renters, and this solves the problem. The company has the backing of most major aviation insurance providers and even Cessna Aircraft Company.
This is a surprisingly good point. The learning power of human and animal minds is very limited, varies along a normal curve, and doesn't seem to scale with increased computational power (ie: brain size). The decision-making power of human and animal minds is... well, absolute crap, actually, but evolution was working with the constraint that decision-theoretically good decision-making requires lots and lots of compute-power, implying a need for lots and lots of calories, constraining the level of decision-making intelligence that could evolve to consume very limited food supplies.
A significant portion if the deal value is defensive, IMO. AKA: so Google or VK don't buy them and strangle off a major tentacle of user adoption and stickiness of the FB ecosystem.

Facebook doesn't have to directly monetize THOSE $10/day users for this to be a smart decision. They can monetize some users directly, but not having a competitor own whatsapp is worth a lot to FB.
Related HN thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7128458
Specs, please?
Social media 'lie detector' planned
You need to tune into our RNC and DNC conventions every 4 years. These are the two political parties that vote themselves millions of taxpayer funded "security" spending for their conventions in congress.

Protesters are beaten and locked up almost immediately, huge "pens" are made to coral them like animals, and recently the new tactic is to make "safe zones" where people are not even allowed near the events anymore.

If there was even a hint of weapons being used, our police are heavily militarized now and would not hesitate to shoot someone even holding a smartphone if they thought they could get away with it. Virtually no police are prosecuted in any given year for shooting unarmed people in the USA, happens every week.

However what you have in the Ukraine is something I am jealous of, people actually care.
SMS was (still is) huge in the UK too, but all of my friends started using WhatsApp because you could send pictures to each other on WhatsApp without having to use MMS which cost more, was always a hassle to set up and wasn't available on every phone back in the beginning.
Generally, not much.

You need to file a flight plan, which is essentially just telling the ATC where you're going, and where you're coming from. The flight plan is also useful in case you get into trouble, since it contains the identifying information for your plane, the number of people on board, and for instance the safety equipment on board. So if you crash, the search-and-rescue people know what to expect.

Depending on the system the place you're flying to uses, filing the plan might be filling a web form. At least in Finland you could also do that via a phone call or with radio.

If there are customs and passport formalities between the countries you travel to, you will need to taxi your plane to a 'customs control' parking lot on the airport so that the customs people can check it. On some small airports this may require alerting them ahead of time so that they'll actually be there.

You probably also have to have a radio and a transponder on the airplane.

Between some countries, like the EU/Schengen area, flying between countries is pretty much the same as flying inside a country. So the requirements mostly depend on airspace restrictions in the area you fly. Between other countries things may vary. For example, back then I was told that it is quite impossible to fly from Finland to Russia since there was essentially no GA in Russia.

(disclaimer: it has been nearly 10 years since I flew last time, so some of this may be incorrect or outdated)
If you are mainly interested, in what happens with people, accuracy of the rest of simulation is not important, you only need to simulate the parts people see with the resolution they can see, you even can have lots of inconsistencies as long as they are not reproducible.
Daily Mail – live traffic dashboard
Just be glad that Facebook didn't buy Flappy Bird for 16 billion bitcoin...

I'm pretty sure when it happens the universe is supposed to end or something.
I think	atmosx points very well written and neutral. What exactly is incorrect from your point of view?

Russian medias are biased (as West medias are), but I don't see how it related to post above.
Fuel is also a lot more expensive now. And that makes up quite a significant chunk of the flying costs.

On a quick look, the price of an hour of flying has gone up nearly 50% in the last ten years in the aviation club I used to belong to.
Yep, HP made it a policy to sign all their vulnerable firmwares. The procedure remains the same: please print this document to commence firmware upgrade. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRGEnakrx9o
> I think it's time for someone to build a new messaging app

And that it precisely what I am helping to do!

We have built a Whatsapp-style messenger, with the added benefit of being able to make free calls to US, Canadian and UK numbers. We also launched a data-SIM plan last week for $15/month. Check it out: http://upptalk.com and http://uppwireless.com
both, untill you observe it ;-)
More than 10 people were shot today by snipers. Nothing to be jealous about.
The point of the article is that WhatsApp built that customer base not having only shiny iPhone or Android app, but also having a presence on feature phones.
[2012, Video] Metrics, metrics everywhere
Open Source? :3
You mean one of the more sensible purchases amidst all the idiocy of the first dotcom bubble? I mean, I fail to see how buying Hotmail was a bad idea for Microsoft.
Shame it clashes with O'Reilly's Velocity Conference - http://velocityconf.com/ as I'd like to do both (they did this the year before last too)
Supposedly they have a huge install base in many (non-US) markets. The idea is probably that network effects will make it so that they'll continue to be the dominant player for a long time.
That's what 4.1% annual inflation compounded over 10 years will do.

In real dollar terms, that price is very close to what it was 10 years ago.
can we please put this right on top of the whole page and close this thread?
too many ai-fanboys in here, who got their knowledge about ai from hollywood movies and video games..
It's very cool, I'm only a bit disappointed that the author did not consider what would happen if they tried to run the simulation ahead of them to see the future. What would happen then? All kinds of paradoxes arise.
How We Conquered SXSW for Less Than $10,000
The fall and rise of SVG: How SVG is more relevant than ever
Yeah, most of the time that works fine, but if my version of the branch I'm switching onto is behind then switching can induce "fake" conflicts; it's easier (I find) to just be in the habit of always stashing.
In Austria, almost everyone has a unlimited (or very high limit) plan.

WhatApps only recently (last autumn) got traction, mainly because of friends from other countries like Germany.
Ah, ok. So you haven't understood the problem, but wanted to say something. Great.
Whatsapp was sold for $16B but only $4B in cash, I'm not sure the $12B in shares of Facebook is real money.

I think Tesla is worth $24B or more. It's not about what they have already achieved but the vision and the long way to go.
You're right and they're not currently a goal:

"Non-goals:
make channels completely lock-free (this would significantly complicate implementation and make it slower for common cases)"

http://talks.golang.org/2014/go1.3.slide#8
As far as I heard, the sniper was from the opposition, and he shot police officers, no?
so you think that the goal was to not have any competitors in the smartphone messaging? because Instagram and Whatsapp are not Social Networks.
Reporting From the Web's Underbelly
If you factor in all risks (the "as experienced" rate), GA flight is about as dangerous per mile as riding motorcycles.

I firmly believe that 2/3rds of the fatality risk in GA is pilot-controlled and readily avoidable: weather, fuel exhaustion and "ostentatious display" (buzzing, etc) are relatively easy to avoid with nothing more than basic knowledge and firm discipline.

On a motorcycle, many risks are rider-controlled but a lot of your safety is in the hands of people near you that you'll never meet. Less so in aviation, IMO.
Don't want to be beta testing that simulator.
> friendly AI problem

nooo, please!! not any more of this kurzweil crap. guys wake up! This world is not some asimov sci-fi story.

friendly ai

I always get a headache when I read that term online. ppl seem to go crazy about the machines taking over earth idea but this whole debate is so utterly useless! If all the effort fapping to conscious AI and friendly AI would be put into concrete ai research (agi as well as applied ai) we would get to a reasonable point so much sooner...
A private pilot license (PPL) does not allow for commercial flying (charging passengers). To charge passengers to pilot requires a commercial pilot license.
With the notable exception of 1968 Democratic National Convention[1] I'm having trouble finding any news coverage of multiple injuries at a RNC or DNC. Care to provide references?

---

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Democratic_National_Conven...
I reloaded the page in firefox and the delay stopped.
A new dependency status viewer for composer php, similar to david-ww (npm)
I've built a new way for watch your dependencies on composer packagist. Send me a feedback
Although what you say is a perfectly valid argument, it's not even close to what is happening now.

For somebody who also lives in a country that is heavily influenced by Russia, it is clear that this is actually a peoples protest.

Put in simple words: There is no way for anybody to do any business with somebody outside Russia's circle. There is no way for anybody outside Russia's circle to tap into any of these countries. There isn't any visible progress and there aren't any kind of investments coming in.

I suspect some people got mad.
smart - nope. pretentious guesswork and attention whoring is what is going on here
I think because of the laws of causality you can't just simulate a tiny bit of the universe and expect to get accurate results because everything has a sphere of influence expanding at the speed of light.

For instance astronomers observe phenomenons that occurred in galaxies far far away. If in the simulated universe you just bound yourself to simulate, say, the solar system then such events wouldn't occur exactly in the same way. We wouldn't find the same bodies at the same position. That in turn would make the path of the simulation diverge significantly from our reality.

Think for instance what would happen if the constellations weren't the same in the sky. All astrology would be different. It might seem like a minor change but in the course of centuries that would probably amount to a big change.

That being said since the story postulates that the computer has infinite processing power and storage you can just leave out this bit and the story still makes sense, you just assume that it simulates the entire universe at all time.
> Writing J2ME apps is no cakewalk.

It's a bizarre perversion of everything that makes software development bearable. I've created my share of horribly cobbled-together ad-hoc embedded software development toolchains, but these can't hold a candle to the abysmal monstrosity of a vendor-patched J2ME SDK.
Not directly, but most of the time when they let someone to speak on air, that someone usually says something along these lines.
> I think atmosx points very well written and neutral.

No. They are completely wrong or a complete fantasy. From things that are fantasy like "this is not good for ukrainians", or conspiracy-like talks about "big games by giants" bla-bla, to being wrong in facts like "west is using Nazis". Complete bullshit. It's not Nazis there, it's normal people from both, East and West.

p.s.: Russian medias are not biased, they are writing complete shit, from obviously underestimating number of protestors, to saying bullshit like "Ukrainian people protest against laws that forbid Nacism and Fashism". How biased you need to be to say bullshit like this?
WhatsApp is not p2p, they maintain a constant server connection which is not a problem for routers/gateways/NATs because its initiated from the client side.
I assume they have to pay taxes over this.
Would it not make sense for apple to buy microsoft first. It would get them a mac in every home.
have you looked at Python 3.3 docs? I think they look really clean and nice.
I didn't mean to imply it was as bad as the Ukraine, but for such a "free country" they don't let people even protest anymore so it never can escalate. There are probably better examples like New Orleans that escape me right now.

Also, no-one is allowed near the conventions anymore. So much for freedom of speech unless you want to protest a poor woman going into a health center for an abortion, then be as close as you want.

Oh here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Republican_National_Conven...

Note the pre-emptive arrests a week before the convention. I think we were criticizing China for that behavior.
No, it's not. Drive is the desire to maximise future available options (e.g. to not get trapped). There is already software that decides what to do without a human telling it what to do. For more see http://www.ted.com/talks/alex_wissner_gross_a_new_equation_f...
Some Basic Indicators From My 2013 Survey
[ have a friend who tried to kill himself because he failed the Google interview.]

WHOA, talk about extremes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DxkDiAcSF8
What? No! Here are people who died from sniper http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaMbkoJT2uY

Here's a medical worker who had been shot https://twitter.com/HromadskeTV/status/436445556664066048/ph...

Here's a video of sniper shooting at people: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=570573343039007&set=vb....
"Firefox OS - Answering global challenges" slides by Christian Heilmann:

http://www.slideshare.net/cheilmann/developerweek
John Maxwell The 5 Levels of Leadership [video]
Autotranslation:

> Glory to Ukraine! Men and women, sorry not with you, not in Kiev! We hope that you find an opportunity to help!
Papparazzi would most likely sue at that point, not a criminal charge. A random glasshole on the street is unlikely to find a lot of sympathy from the police.
And they may well be doing that, and that would make them assholes.

What do you not get about this being subjective and based on cultural and behavioural expectations?

Jesus...
Bike Components and Parts
wow, I have to go all the way down to find the first person serious about the topic. That's why I love my academic surroundings, all the fantasizing video game fanboys are sorted out in the beginning and what's left are serious researchers really devoted to solving the riddles intelligence imposes..
This is also a recursive reasoning, so it's hard to go for peace after that.
Oh, that makes sense, although I guess I'm a bit surprised that FBW isn't common with ultralights, given its advantages.
Spotify is one I can think of.
Oy! Plenty of us don't want Brave New World at all. That World State sucked.

(If we're going all LW on this thread: http://lesswrong.com/lw/xt/interpersonal_entanglement/)

>Sure, it sounds silly. But if your grand vision of the future isn't at least as much fun as a volcano lair with catpersons of the appropriate gender, you should just go with that instead. This rules out a surprising number of proposals.
That's amazing, think of all the lives it will save!
[HIRING] Stuttgart: Hardware Developer ConnectedCar
I've done it US-Canada, and entering Canada was an absolute pleasure and smooth experience; coming back into the US has become much more hassle (and I'm a US citizen, flying an N-reg [US] airplane). That was before 9/11 and Homeland Security.

Now, entering the US is much more aggravating and "tense".

It's not so much that there's lots of red tape, but that the entire experience I perceive as unfriendly and waiting to spring a $5000 fine of you for missing some timing deadline by a few minutes or for having the paperwork innocently imperfectly filled out.

There's also a sense of discoordination. You have to file electronically, and then call the customs office on the phone, giving them a small window for your arrival. You used to just be able to have ATC advise customs of your ETA.

It's to the point where when I need to go to Windsor, Canada, I will often overfly the Windsor airport, cross back into the US, land at Detroit (either Metro or City airport) and rent a car to drive back into Canada. If I just overfly Canada but takeoff and land in the US, it's still a domestic flight and I avoid all the hassle.

I'm sure if I did it more often that it would become routine and seem less arcane and fraught with peril, but I only have occassion to do it a couple times per year, max, and Detroit is really close to Windsor anyway, so it'll stay a mystery for me until I go island hopping the Carribean. That's where a rental car from San Juan, PR or Miami doesn't work as a substitute for a border-crossing.
even if removed, WhatsApp could store metadata like who is talking to whom. This is valuable to try to identify the trendsetters and key people to market to. With a bit of text analysis like google do with gmail, they can personalise ads more. all very very valuable data.
There is no way out for Yanukovich now. He will become the next Assad in the eyes of the freedom-loving world. The script is:

- a group of peaceful protesters takes to the streets with legitimate grievances (corruption, disagreement with the govt policy etc.)

- a few extremists start shooting up the police with live ammunition.

- the police suffers casualties, becomes demoralized, cannot keep order.

- the army is brought in, starts firing live ammunition, civilians suffer casualties.

- much large part of common people becomes radicalized, takes anti-government side.

- civil war begins

The early stages of Syrian destabilization scenario followed exactly the same path. In Syria they used extreme Islamist to infiltrate border cities, shoot up the police and force heavy measures from the state.

In Ukraine they are now using extreme nationalists to do the same.

It's Catch 22 and there is no way out.

Yanukovich should give up and join the freaking EU already.
On the other hand Microsoft buying Nokia's phone business in a $7.2 billion seems like good bargain since they are supposedly have more than billion users. WhatsApp is just an App.
Opposition doesn't have any kind of weapon or warriors at all! People are not with opposition, and opposition leaders lost their voice now, noone listens to them. People are too angry.
This is only true if one of the files that you've changed has 100% no changes between the branch you're currently on and the branch you're switching to. Even stuff that would normally be auto-merged will not allow you to switch branches.

I still usually give it a try, and then stash when that gives me a problem. With 12 developers and some high-churn files, it's pretty common that 2 people are doing something with the same file, even with branches that only last 1-2 days.
He was too expensive.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the trade deal with the EU how the protests began? Because lots of people wanted the deal signed instead of aligning with Russia?

I know that now the protests are against the anti-protest laws and the beatings, but the EU deal was also a factor, and would probably be a factor again once the protests end.
MtGox Bitcoin update
I'll reiterate something another poster said, since it isnt' getting enough credit:

Read HP:MoR.

It's a fanfic of Harry Potter, written by the same Eliezer Yudkowsky who wrote much of Less Wrong. It was specifically written to convey the feeling of "what it means to be a rationalist".

For those who aren't into Harry Potter or into Fanfiction (like me), I can tell you this: Suprisingly, it is one of the best stories I've ever read. And I'm talking just as a story, nevermind the other value you can get form it, which is a good introduction to the "rationalist" community.

I'd argue that the BEST way to understand what is going on at LessWrong is to read HP:MoR, as it was intended to be such an intro and succeeds masterfully, while being amazingly fun.
Guess how long ICQ has a J2ME app...
Voynich – a provisional, partial decoding of the Voynich script
When will India overtake the US?
What happened to the French minitel users; where are they now?

Was there a particular social forum that ruled minitel - did it transition to the web?
So having PHP as your main language means you can't learn anything else?
Hence the 'See all friends using the Bang with Friends app' incident.
Just amazing example of cargo-cult phenomenon! The idea that using a particular technology (here J2ME) would allow one to get a $16B exit. Hilarious!
So if you work at company with a PHP stack (meaning your main language will obviously be PHP) you can't learn anything else?
Yes, I was there when protest began. President was telling that Ukraine is on path of joining EU for a long time, and in a last moment he turns 180 degrees. But then, Ukraine was kind of split to those supporting EU movement and those who don't. Kiev had no more than 1000 protestors then (imho).

Then there was a night when protested people got beaten by police, next morning goverment commented that "it was done to be able to install New-Year Tree!". That's when everything really started. It's not about EU now, really.
If facebook promised to let whatsApp stay as an independent product and not pollute it with ads then why did facebook purchase it in the first place. They are not going to integrate whatsApp as a part of facebook messenger. They might make something else something all together but still a costly price to pay whatsApp to make whatsApp what its already doing. (could be a different reason to take out competition, either way a pretty expensive agreement.)

One thing is sure, any app which connects a billion users, facebook will go after it.
This is also why Brazil is heating up so much in terms of start-up interest. It has a large population speaking the same language with significant income and a single government. And its government tends to be somewhat less nervous making (at least in some regards) than China's.
Just how much are you worth to Facebook?
I used to work for a company that built it's main business product in Erlang. It worked well as product, but business wise hiring engineers was the hardest part. It wasn't helped that they are based in London, where a certain consultancy snatches pretty much anyone who lists Erlang in their CV.