skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Careful trying to be the traveliest traveler. No matter how bad ass you are, there's always a bigger badass somewhere.

I remember a conversation at a little dive hostel in Durban, where the table was recounting their Bad Flight stories, one upping each other as one does at dive hostels around the world. After a particularly grim story about The Gambia, this heretofore quiet older guy mumbles "yeah, I'm never going to fly Air Ethiopia again."

Conversation proceeded, but after a few more stories, I asked the guy why, exactly he wasn't planning to fly that airline again.

Turned out he'd personally been on not one but two Air Ethiopia plane crashes. Crashed two thirds of their fleet single handedly evidently.

The second time, they'd landed in the jungle in the Congo, were detained by a local warlord, attempted escape, and were gunned down by the local militia. Back in government hands, the survivors were put on a plane, which sat on the runway for an hour surrounded by jeeps and shouting men before they were unloaded and marched off to a shed, expecting to be killed. Several tense hours later, the "general" came back and said they could go now, and apologized for the delay, as they needed the plane "to bomb the rebels."

Then he showed us the bullet wound in his back.

Since then, I tend to temper my speech when discussing how authentic my personal travel experiences are in relation to others.

But I did steal his story.
> "Excellent communication skills"

This is an absolutely ridiculous thing to put in a job advertisement in the first place.

So they want someone who has an English major or a communications degree?

I suspect not. It's pure fluff that's meaningless and points to a badly written job advertisement by someone inexperienced.

Reality is you want someone who is OK at communicating, fits with the team and excellent at their job, which is Web Design.
Has anyone heard of this one:

http://www.roguetemple.com/z/hyper.php

A roguelike using hyperbolic geometry. Looking at the screenshots it instantly reminded me of M.C. Escher lithographs.
TWA 800 is perhaps the more familiar example, at least to anyone in the New York area. Plenty of theories about a missile in that case too, but the actual cause was an electrical fault.
im.imo used to do skype over https...
I'm still looking for a good skype alternative, with video, with secure communications. Cant find a good software.:(
at this point i'd like to recommend cyanogenmod with privacy guard again [1]

or openpdroid [2], or both. the cool thing about openpdroid is that you can spoof location requests too. also, i don't think any other privacy app allows you to block requests to sim and imei info

[1] http://www.androidcentral.com/cyanogenmod-updating-privacy-g...

[2] http://www.xda-developers.com/android/openpdroid-brings-an-o...
Ironically, the previous generation was also supposed to be taught how to think rather than just how to do math:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math
"Amtrak makes a fair bit of money on the Northeast Corridor (and a couple of related routes)"

This claim was made in a WP article[1], but as this government report[2] points out, the accounting procedures used were flawed. To the point a Brookings Institute report[3] which reported in Slate[4] got the numbers wrong. Basically, it is only profitable if you do not count capital costs.

1) http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/commuting/amtrak-faces-c...

2) http://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/dot/files/Amtrak's%20New%20Cost...

3) http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2013...

4) http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/03/01/amtrak_profit...
It's difficult even on land. I recall an accident that involved a twin engine light aircraft that vanished in the middle of the night in Alaska perhaps 20 years ago.

Search parties searched for quite some time, but gave up. Five years later, the plane was found in the woods some 100 meters away from a fairly frequently traveled two-lane road.
It give me chills when i read this quote:

Returns the password for a user associated with the API account. Note, this can't be used to lookup just any user's password – the user must have been created by the API account.
Yeah you were quite right, the info has now been removed from Mark's blog.
I just asked a few Wolfram employees at SXSW what this is. They said, "It's Mathematica running on our servers with better data store and NLP integration."

I also told them that the community seems confused about the product and that this page seemed to be mostly marketing bullshit. For some reason that made them really defensive, and they explained "It's pretty clear from the page what we're offering and the people we're trying to reach will see the value."

FYI to those wondering.
"Who the hell thinks it's OK to store non-encrypted passwords in this day and age?"
You'd be surprised: http://plaintextoffenders.com/

...and an amazing number of finance organisations who can't handle non alpha-numeric characters in passwords, indicating failure to hash.
What I think makes her approach powerful is that she does BOTH of two very important things: she expects the kids do more than they are, and she only asks them to take the step right in front of them.

I see a lot of teachers/parents/bosses doing one or the other. They demand more of a kid, but fail to properly assess where the kid is, and therefore ask a little bit too much, setting the kid up for failure. Or they acknowledge where the kid is but fail to really push them to take the next step, leading to complacency. Both ultimately lead to fear.

In practice doing it right requires immense knowledge of both the subject and the student, which is what makes it hard. But when done right, people respond by growing very fast. And the experience, while sometimes exhausting, feels humane and healthy.
What platform?
> There was an article on reddit questioning why we can track a rover on Mars but not a commercial airliner on Earth.

We have billions of dollars of equipment focused on tracking that rover, and we still lose contact with it sometimes.
Thanks! This could be very useful!
It's basically just subtracting whatever you can think of until you finish, it isn't really teaching division at all. The main idea is just to prevent having to teach kids the times tables so they can be promoted out of the system easier.
I can't seem to figure out which PC platforms they're targeting, they just say "PC".
Learning to sum, subtract, multiply and divide in your head is pretty important, e.g. to be able to work with money, so that's a super useful thing to learn in primary school. But doing long division on paper is not useful imho. It's not even useful for high level math, or programming (except for CPU design). Why do they teach it in primary school? I always wondered that, since I never needed it (at least not in decimal).
I actually used it for about 3 years (2009-2012) for stochastic modelling (insurance). We moved off the platform because to be honest we rewrote most of the functionality we used in C# over a couple of weekends.

When I make those comments, they are about the language, not the ecosystem or the product as a whole.

The language is merely ok.

The ecosystem, particularly with the amount of data feeds you can plug into it is pretty good as is the sheer enormity of the library of off-the-shelf functions it gives you.
The Bitcoin Model for Crowdfunding
Godus is certainly not the odd one out, but at the same time the lead behind it is quite well known for under delivering as opposed to those guys who are unknown.
NuoDB: A Truly Geo-Distributed Database
Yeah, with respect, I think you're being duped. What you're seeing is plain text being drawn as images, making you think the images are input. You only have to click the code to see the plain text (and its not pretty).

Not only have they not gone farther than others, I cant find a single instance of anything in WL that's not plainly plain text. They have interesting output, not particularly interesting input.
as i mentioned below, some engines already send flight data to satellites. ironically some of these newer engines also have much higher failure rates.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/airbus-engin...

http://atwonline.com/engines/final-qantas-a380-engine-failur...

http://www.rolls-royce.com/about/technology/systems_tech/mon...
Just noticed your comment, albeit a few days late. If you have questions about getting started or making connections in Chatt - shoot me an email and we'll try to set some intro's up. Per your ideals, this could be a pretty good place to work on your project. Cost of living will definitely be less than Austin. (although our brisket is not quite as good).
And the nice XSS!
http://whatsmybrowser.org/b/GXVP9QT
I'm saying that if black boxes are sufficient to root-cause the vast majority of commercial airline crashes, what problem are we trying to solve by "rethinking" them? The only one I can think of is speeding up the process, but it's not clear that that's actually a real problem rather than just disappointing to someone in the news industry who wants answers within a few news cycles.
This is happening because the message is: nutrition science is a very problematic field, and it's at the opposite of being straightforward and/or evident.

If you want this kind of researches, you will find by yourself lots of researches that support one thesis, then lots of researches supporting the opposite.

I've stopped reading nutrition research, because it's essentially a jumble of conflicting, unfounded theories.

The smartest thing one can do, for this specific question, is this: go to a sports club, then ask to the people: when you stop practicing your sport, do you get fatter? And conversely, when you started, or in periods of intensive training, do you get leaner?

If you're really curious about the subject, do that, you will get the answer.

I've been practicing sports for 20+ years, so I know the answer, and the experience of any person who's been practicing sport intensively for decades, is worth way more than a platoon of armchair academic nutritionits can possibly theorize.

This should remind that research (at least, this type of research) should be grounded and not detached from reality.
Hey thanks, sorry somehow the js tracking code got messed up, should be working now.
Pssst, I decided to make a quick, improvised screencast to show off live coding and FRP. http://dthompson.us/videos/guile-2d-frp-demo.webm

Also, wingo's blog is excellent. He's doing amazing work for Guile. His work reassures me that I've made a good choice to invest in Guile.
It absolutely is important to learn the long division algorithm for programming. How else do you deal with integer division?

(Yes, integer division, which people refer to as "big number" division for some bizarre reason.)
Before you waste time with better data logging, please install an ejection seat, parachute, and a built-in life support system. That's much more useful than sensors that record the demise of the passengers to satisfy the bloodlust of news corps.

Or rationally, don't change a damn thing. Airliners are fine. Any other form of transportation (maybe with the exception of trains) is many times more deadly and we cope with that risk just fine.
I was thinking that kick starter was all about helping in project to "kick start". So obviously for me, I find it normal that's there is still no game at this early stage of development. Or rather: 10% complete development so far.

It looks like people get "wrongly" used to dev studios submitting projects nearly completed. But those are more like the exception than the rule. If look closely to the list of kickstart submission I think that's the case most of the time for software development, that is they are far from completed. And the lead developer has an idea and needs fund to work full-time on his idea and/or hire folks for helping him out. For instance: lighttable of Chris Granger. And I think that's what is thrilling about kick starter and launching a startup. That's all about taking risks.
Same browser engine and useragents
I typically don't take my watch off because if I do, it may be several days before I remember to put it back on again.

Why not wear it 24/7?
I think it's a clever way to introduce the properties of numbers without forcing memorization of a multiplication table. It's a very brute force technique. Of course memorization is useful, but so will understanding these properties as the kids enter algebra.
I worked at one place where it was easier to take the server from a remote location, transport it to a central hub, upgrade and install new software, and transport it back then to download the updates and remote install. This was a while back, but bandwidth in some places was horrible and dropped often.
I actually didn't catch that! That's hilarious.
Anonymous hackers uncover alleged proof of Mt. Gox fraud from site’s CEO
To the Cloud: An Essay Celebrating 25 Years of the Web
What would you expect the behavior to be there? [5, 5]?

I know that JS has its quirks (to say it nicely), but once you understand it (type coercion, equality, scoping, etc) it doesn't seem to be a huge burden to me.
> Especially if it was optimized for surviving impact with water rather than, for example, a mountain.

I think that's a distinction without difference. At 500mph, the water might as well be rock.
I totally agree with making black boxes more advanced to phone home and such, but this line annoyed me:

"Your iPhone is more powerful than the evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit. Simple changes could mean faster answers for plane crashes"

You're talking about the black box for a airline jet. This thing is supposed to survive plane crashes; not just being dropped a meter off the floor, but smashing into the ground going 100's of meters per second. The design constraints in those conditions include, assuming the plane is now a ballistic fire ball smashing into the ocean: operating temperature well above even industrial components to survive the fire, mechanical strength to withstand hundreds if not thousands of g's during impact (at this speed the ocean is the same as solid rock), and then float in the freezing ocean for days if not weeks until it is recovered. I'm not sure if black boxes are guaranteed to float or not, but if they are designed to sink, they must then withstand tens of atmospheres extra pressure for a sustained period of time.

The secret is that smartphone processors have been more powerful than safety critical processors since their inception with the IBM Simon [1]. The RAD750 [2], NASA's only "current generation" processor, began to fly in 2005 with a whopping single core with a 110Mhz core clock and an older manufacturing process than that of processors used for early 2000's era smart phones. When technology is moving so fast that Intel is building a new multi-billion dollar factory every few years, safety critical device designers don't give a shit about how fast they are. They care that they can get a level of confidence in the stability and reliability of the processor, that it has years of data on life time, and then that it can be manufactured by an array of suppliers. That cannot be guaranteed by cutting edge technology, no matter how many bits or fancy virtualization features you throw at it. For the black box, this means every component in the design must survive and operate (an IC can survive the hundreds of deg C in a reflow oven but it sure as hell won't work if you send current through it) at or close to those conditions.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750
On Understanding Data Abstraction
> It's a fragile model and does not deserve to be on the same list as these beautiful and useful ideas.

I have a copy of the book at home, Ian Stewart is a very good populariser of maths.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seventeen-Equations-that-Changed-Wor...

You should take the title of the book literally, equations that changed the world (but not necessarily for the better).
On the contrary: for larger numbers, it is an efficient method, in the sense that one can expect students to do it.

For example, what's the first digit of 1019794644/1457? I would spend a few seconds before taking a guess at 7, compute 71457 to get 10199, conclude "oh, it must be 6", compute 61457, subtract it, etc.

And I can make a good educated guess to get that initial 7 because I know 14 = 1/7 (in the same sense that 27 = 1/37 and 91 = 1/11. It helps to know some factorisations of integers close to 10^n). You can't expect all students to do that, and you don't have to. It turns out that, if they just guess a low end 5, they do better than me, because they only have to compute 51457 (for an expert, a bit easier than either 6 or 7, but for them, likely equally difficult), and, from there, already will have simplified the problem. Their next multiplication will be 11457. After 'my' 71457, I still have to do a more difficult 61457.

Also, looking at it objectively, it turns out that I do the exact same thing as that student that "isn't that good at long division". The only difference it that that student is honest and that I lie, by writing the answer in a way that suggests that that '6' came to me by some divine intervention, and not by correcting an initially incorrect guess.
Tox.IM Is the Open Source Skype REplacement!
Those higher orbits are significantly more expensive to achieve.
Neural nets are a useful technology but they are not magic. I doubt they will play much of a role in any effort to improve financial markets.

First, neural nets have been used for decades by various financial market participants, in particular hedge funds, and there impact has been very modest. Second, they are hard to understand thus unlikely to be favored most governments, regulators or even market participants in the unlikely event there was some agreement for global market reform. Lastly, there is no evidence that neural nets have any real advantage in valuing assets over existing techniques. If there were they would be more widely used for that purpose.
eBay Files Patent Application for Bitcoin Currency Exchange
NYT Now is a mobile news platform with a dedicated staff curating stories
Forget automatic verification, I'm extremely skeptical you wouldn't notice this just manually.
> Newton originally expressed using differential calculus as F = dp/dt, and developed his second law as an application of his newly-developed calculus.

You used Leibnitz notation, Leibnitz kicked Newton's arse, and Newton was a complete arsehole.
No argument on planes being better than driving, but could you give a little more detail on the un-accounted-for "fat" you're attributing to trains?
You'd be amazed by the large, boneheaded moves that even the smartest people make when they fail to think defensively. Any security holes, even when people see them, can be easily discounted by just 'eh, nobody will try to hack us'. I've seen that done in Fortune 500 companies whose main business is all about IP!

If you can't identify how likely you are of being hacked, and how much is there to lose if that happens, you'll make terrible security decisions, regardless of the engineering skills available.
Yes. That's the behaviour in Python, Ruby and just about every other language with overloaded operators.
While the author may me making some technological comparisons that need a bit of vetting the basis premise is good.

Given how much these planes cost it does seem reasonable to have real time telemetry. Yes it is hard. Yes it is expensive. But no where do I read it can't be done. In fact I think a lot of technological innovation has been driven by people saying "Nope...you can't do that.".

Where is the incentive to provide real time telemetry? More crashes? This is one place where I feel the FAA does have quite a bit of responsibility.
It is in fact the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station that Amtrak trains arrive in.
I like that statement, so true:

"If you don't pay for the product - you ARE the product"

I'd add that even if you pay for product - you're still the product.

If you don't like being the product, stop using the product :)
No, the Opera user agent contains an additional OPR/XX where XX is the Opera version.
Source on air travel being better than cars please.

I'm genuinely curious because I've always been told that flying is worse, and it would be nice to feel less guilty about flying.

Coming to think of it maybe planes are worse because of the fact that, even if driving is worse for the same distance, people are willing to go much further with planes because they are so much faster, and therefore end up polluting more overall.
I would agree with you, but I've actually seen the homework assignments and only acceptable correct answers to common core work, and it's disgusting.

Trying to solve 72/9? Better show your work by drawing 72 circles, or you get no credit.
Dear Marginalized People Coming Into Tech
I'd go for "brillant": http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Brillant_Paula_Bean.aspx
"in an age where we better understand the power of social network analysis and the sensitivity of the social graph, the exposure of metadata by a "Web of Trust" is no longer acceptable from a security standpoint."

That depends on your security goal. Your goal might be to check to see if a message was sent by the person listed in the "From" field, in which case WoT can work very well.

"Nearly every project here uses Trust On First Use (TOFU) in one way or another"

This is not perfect either. In the scenario I described above, TOFU may be less useful than WoT. There are also scenarios in which TOFU makes no sense at all -- maybe I want to anonymously send an encrypted message to someone, and I have no point of reference for their key.

"This is not possible with the traditional protocol for email transport, although it will probably be possible to piggyback additional (non-backward compatible) protocols on top of traditional email transport in order to achieve metadata protection."

Ahem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk_anonymous_remailer
Multiplication is a way to do adding faster, and division is a way to do subtraction faster. Pretty cool if kids are being encouraged to realise that relationship.

It was only when I watched videos of those mechanical "fire control" computers on YouTube that I understood that integration is just a way of adding. Multiplication is adding the same number again and again, which is why integrating a constant (that number) is the same as multiplication. Cute.
Windows/Mac/Linux, for now. Using libgdx on the JVM, so Android and iOS (via RoboVM) are pretty easy, but I'm using Rhino for a scripting layer and that might not play so nicely with RoboVM or Dalvik.
Retrospective on a failed game
Post on Hacker News, expect to get "hacked".
Some decisions had to be made quick. But Most of them do not have to. However all of us tend to make quick decisions even when not required.
Yeah, they're the same, but different.
The PS Vita browser gets detected as Safari, and the URL it gives me is invalid http://www.whatsmybrowser.org/b/GFWPFC0
I don't know if the Presidential veto would have been applied if the companies' nationalities had been reversed (I hope it would have been as it was correct). [0]

ITC bans include devices that aren't explicitly listed if there is no colourable difference in the infringement.

[0] I'm British so nationally neutral.
I dont think you realize how common the WTFs in this situation are. If you are dealing with a reputable company, this is super super WTF.

When you are looking at a small website/API someone made for fun or something....It can normally be badly broken in less than 2-3 minutes....and I'm not even that talented like some of the guys out there.
Damn, that's too bad. Oh well. It's a closed source dead end anyway.

Time to dust off the old side project.