skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Actually, no. If right now 50% of kids started to die early, we'd have pretty much the same number of kids growing up to be Einsteins; we'd just compensate it by more births just as we have always done.

In the same way, if a large portion of the population was suddenly killed today, in the long run it wouldn't affect the number of people. The total population limit/equilibrium is determined by food production, tech and social habits; but actual mass deaths (say, as ww1/ww2) are just a short term disturbance in the number of people and quickly get corrected.

It doesn't mean that curing polio is useless - it makes many people much happier; but simply there is no direct relation between happiness of one generation and wellbeing of non-immediate future generations. Culture gets passed on; built infrastructure gets passed on; reseach gets passed on; but there's almost no difference caused by generation suffering horrible conditions/war/torture [assuming no large permanent loss of knowledge/infrastructure; just the suffering&deaths] and that generation living happily. In the short term there's an effect, sure, but in the long term?

Is Germany suffering now in any way because the 30-year-war in 17th century killed 30-40% of the population? Would it be any better place if that war&suffering hadn't happened ? Definitely no. The lost people recover in a generation or two, and that's it.
NetBeans is slick. I just finished a small java/swing project to make a desktop data conversion tool. I don't have much experience with java and almost none with IDEs but I was pleasantly surprised.

I found the editor to be decent and had good emacs bindings, even enabling the "tab goes to proper indent" behavior. The debugger was very good. It was able to easily manipulate the various threads of the program and quickly find a problem. The build files that NetBeans generated were well designed and I was able to easily add some build actions.

My only other experience with an IDE was visual studio in 2004 in my freshman c++ classes. That was huge pain. Nobody really understood what it was doing. And problems were regularly solved by creating a new project and copy-pasting code from the old to the new. On the other hand VS may have been great and it's the additional 10 years of experience that made the difference. haha
Having recently finished Black Swan and Antifragile I would argue for Taleb's investment advice: 80% to Gates earning you a stable and guaranteed, if not boring, improvement. 20% to Musk to provide you the maximum exposure to risk and therefore potentially unlimited upside.

The 80% is pretty much guaranteed to be put to good use. And even at the worst case for the rest, you only lose 20%.
You're making a mistake. The question is not whether to start a company with PHP vs language X. The company is long started. The question is not whether or not to poof into existence a port from all of FB to language X. That's not possible. The question is, given that PHP is the current language, with all its faults, will it it cost more (including all definitions of cost) to make the switch? How long will it take? Does it get the job done? How bad is the damage?

The question more pertinent to your argument is, did they make a mistake years ago choosing PHP? That's when the could have conceivably gone with language X.

BTW the types of stuff you're listing are documented here. So thorough it's amusing to read: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...
If number of people are not the limiting factor to working on both problems, why would one a) impose a condition to work on the problems in a sequential order, and b) prefer an order based on gaining more people first?
Starbucks iPhone App With Digital Tipping And Shake-To-Pay Now Available
http://www.ninjainvoice.com/
The HLearn libraries have a really interesting approach to this.

But I think the Julia community is more active in these areas
These two are good points:

1. "There are just two grades of commodities in the world: the best -- and the others."

2. "...whether he can talk and write effectively... If you write and speak neatly and accurately, it is because your thinking is orderly; if your expression is forceful, the thought back of it must be forceful. But if you blunder for words, punctuate incorrectly, spell incorrectly, and express yourself clumsily, I'm sure to believe you mind is cluttered and ill-disciplined."
You could also run a secondary db and use db_charmer or something to set the writes on a different db
Yup.

That's how you increase fruit content in your müsli - shake the bag, scoop from the top and leave oats to others :)
Sure it can eventually come to that, but thinking that businesses operate for the most part in compliance with the law because they are worried about being accosted by the US military is just fear mongering.
How do you handle good people leaving your company?
The most important thing in American politics is power, and power comes from money

Since most American legislators come from a legal background, the culture of national politics has this world view. Chinese leadership is majority engineering, so at least they have some sense that physics isn't impressed dollars and poll results.
It's on the screen right at 1:25. I don't think shows up in the audio track.
A Website Asks Readers to Finance Independent Journalists
The 1M writes/second capability is a valuable benchmark in analyzing continuously variable and real-time information, similar to CFD analysis are high-throughput computational analysis where you end up dealing with multi-variate dimensions of data continuously in flux.
very nice write-up, thanks for writing this.

Edit: just so you are not our own little Malcolm Gladwell though, a [1] would have been nice.
Symantec CEO fired
What was the stupid decision "made back then"?

That Zuck wrote the first version of thefacebook.com in PHP, the language he was the most productive at?

That the initial team didn't rewrite Facebook in Python/Perl/Ruby/Haskell during the fast growth phase? If you have ever experienced the growth phase, you understand how ludicrous the idea of rewrite would be. I've personally experienced and heard only horror stories about rewrites. We underestimate how much hidden wisdom a production code base has and that the messiness is often there for good reasons.
Which is why you incentivize salesmen via commissions and quickly fire those that are obviously showing up just for the base paycheck.
I think many would say that about Steve Jobs. You don't have to be a good person to do good things.
Indeed. So many people seem to ignore the fact that the more people have, the more they consume. It's why the eroding of the power of the middle class seems so shortsighted - unless you're already a plutocrat.
Why don't we just build a Stanford torus and use robots and guns to keep the Earth people out? I've seen this movie...
Honestly, just google "HBase vs. Cassandra" and go from there.

Just keep in mind that between the two, Cassandra has improved a lot more than HBase has.

HBase can be an easy choice if you already have a Hadoop cluster and want to roll the results of Map-Reduce jobs into HBase keys.

The DataStax crew has a decent stack for turning batch/OLAP jobs into queryable keys.

If you have no need of that, want tunable consistency, favor write availability over read performance, then Cassandra might be a fit.

Just uh, don't pretend Cassandra clusters are necessarily trivial to manage just because they're homogenous.

IMHO: put off moving to any of these technologies as long as possible.
One of the things I find irksome about the business world (and this won't seem relevant to the OP till I explain it) is that, while it places a premium on "finishing" and "delivery" (by the way, if you use "deliver" intransitively I will punch you in the face) it also makes it really rare that one can finish anything. It claims to have a culture of "shipping" but employs these people called "executives" whose function is usually to get in the way of people trying to do so.

The disorganization of his "brilliant men" (which is a conflation of two types of people already-- the charismatic and the creative) seems to be something the corporate world (at least in 2014 technology) creates.

The "brilliant" just fall hardest, I'd argue, because highly creative people (one subtype he describes) tend to be most sensitive to context, and highly charismatic people (the other subtype) can usually assume the failure patterns of the highly creative.

The not-finishing culture, I think, is a product of the incoherency of the corporate world. It's not uncommon to see people pass years in Corporate America without achieving anything for reasons not their fault: shifting priorities, projects cancelled for stupid political reasons, "re-orgs", unclear direction.

At some point, people learn that Corporate Life is survived not by finishing (in fact, that can be harmful, because now you have support responsibilities) but being able to come up with a story when things outside your control stop you from finishing. The muddling effects of subordination compound this decline of executive function. It's rather sad, to tell the truth. I wish it weren't that way.

I don't think it's just "brilliant men" who fail, in this way, amid the jarring incoherency of most business. I think they just crash first and hardest. The rest tend to drift downward over time and underperform silently.
The reference was to the 12 apostles of Jesus - they were low in standing and generally unschooled.
There is a correlation to bitcoin repo on github. Is that the cumulative number of repo on github with "bitcoin" tag? or is it the activity on github.com/bitcoin?

Personally, I would think that correlation to the number of bitcoin repo on github does not make sense because that is the cumulative number. However, if you can correlate to average recent activities on all bitcoin repo on github, that could be very interesting. :)
Symantec's Fired CEO
All 2048 games
It's really not just about "one backup colony" but rather the beginning of unlocking the abundance of the Solar System to improve (and move!) life, foremost because you think that when it comes to civilization you believe that the best days are still ahead of us.
The weird thing is, why didn't he hire this person in a way that posed less risk to his business? Why is he handing over a gigantic check worth 140,000 of today's dollars? Isn't this person crazy, or at least a terrible businessman? Yet here we all are, listening to his advice. The longer I think about this the more I dislike it.
What I don't understand is where this 'wealth' is coming from.

Wealth is the result of

- Raw materials (natural resources)

- Capital (building the factories)

- Labor (running the factories)

- Technology (figuring out better ways of doing things

Obviously, technology is improving all the time. We're figuring out better ways of production, so that more can be created even with fewer of the other inputs.

Indeed, while we're stuck with pretty much the original set of raw materials, technology lets us figure out things to do with stuff that we never even realized was a raw material.

Capital is always building on itself. That is, given adequate maintenance, you have all the factories that you had last year. Plus you build new ones this year. So capacity is always increasing.

Labor is always increasing in two ways. First, the population of the world grows, so we've got more people to do the work. But more importantly, the more people we've got to divide the work amongst, the more each person can specialize. And the more each can specialize, the more efficiently he can work at it.

So all these factors work to bring greater wealth to the world.
The thing that I found interesting is that this is much much easier than 2048. This algorithm does very well:

while not game over:
while these moves do anything:
mash a, z, and x as fast as you can
tap d
How is Elon Musk comparable to mysticism and parapsychology? A physics-major working on engineering challenges like space travel, electric cars, and renewable energy... Elon Musk's pursuits are at least based in science, its the business viability that is unknown at the beginning
HealthGoogle: Deskbound by Kelly Starrett
I have seen many python programmers that are PHP haters, are you one of them? just curious, no offence.
I like both Python and PHP, but use PHP for commercial applications.
Why an independent Venice should adopt Dogecoin
Solution: take mass transit. Oh wait, this is LA we're talking about.
> It's still annoying to need to change the entire input method

But you are effectively changing the input method from "typing" to "gaming", so it makes sense to have to toggle some switch somewhere.
But this isn't a failure of "DHH/Rails" philosphy, it's inherent in the MVC paradigm. If we're going to "blame" something, we should be a bit more careful about where that blame actually lies.

The disparity here is between the MVC paradigm and these "emergent" groups being discussed.

The problem is that they don't have a coherent solution. Rather, there are 100 little "solutions" running around with no central philosophy behind them. That's a Bad Thing.
Why Mars? The moon is nearer and no less hospitable (frankly they both suck).

Mars is a vanity project however he chooses to dress it up. An interesting vanity project sure but a vanity project all the same.

And personally I have no issue with that, I just wish he'd be honest. We didn't go to the moon the first time for any good reason, we did it because it was there. Governments can't afford to pay for the "because they're there" projects any more but if Musk, Page and co can then great but don't pretend it's for the good of humanity - "because it's there" is all the justification you need for something that amazing.
> Please don't lecture me about conspiracy theories or data. Ask yourself why you are being an apologist for this douche.

It's pretty clear that you're not interested in reaching conclusions by interpreting the data. Rather, you just want to call Bill Gates names, and prefer to cherry-pick the data to do it with.

For example:

> It is disingenuous and smug for him to start claiming 5 years ago that he's going to start giving away half his money and have him end up with more than cash than when he started. It is an embarassment.

First, he started giving away his money a lot more than five years ago. Second, he did not plan to give away half his wealth -- he planned to give away all of it. Third, very few people who've taken the Giving Pledge have seen their wealth decrease. The market has simply performed well recently.

Imagine if Bill Gates followed a strict policy of ending each year with less money as you suggest. Thus, he would give $20 billion in a year in which the markets one go up 30%, and $0 in a year in which the markets fall. This is a terrible way to give out money. Charities would be unable to undertake any long-term projects with that kind of fluctuation.

That is why your criticism of Bull Gates is not only highly misleading, but highly illogical. Philanthropists should hold onto the money in good times, so that they can continue giving in bad times -- precisely when it is most needed.
2048 for iPhone
I (more or less) agree with the sentiment expressed by "The Missing Parts of Our Knowledge of Basic Rails Features". That said, looking at your example, grouper_cant_be_full would not allow me to provide their desired functionality unless I already knew how to do it. Simply passing a symbol rather than a string there, along with a fairly short comment about what to do with it (i.e. in the controller and config/locales) would easily help people expand their knowledge. In short, you might be right in the above sentiment, but posts like these make hard for me to fault people like the author.

Edit: I should probably note that I _don't_ think you should be "required" to help out like this at all. Simply developing/sharing Rails is certainly _way_ more than I'm doing for other people. I'm just saying if you _are_ going to comment on this stuff, it would be nice if you transferred some of your greater understanding with your comments.
This works well running a grocery chain, but not so well designing the new iPhone.

You'll end up with Windows Mobile.
Just a friendly reminder for parents to not turn a blind eye to anything that goes on at camp. For example, bullying. Teach your child strategies for dealing with it and keep a close emotional attunement. This is a PSA for parents who actually care and don't just use camp as a glorified babysitting service.
Yes, but in related threads my hope was crushed: It seems that 'federated' means: "We have a list of servers that we trust". CM is one of those.

You and I won't be able to host a TextSecure server for our friends and family and still be connected to the general public.
I'm sure if given enough capital he'd love to immediately switch into deploying a Manned mission to Mars, the Hyperloop, mass producing the economy electric sedan at 300 MPC for like $25k. All his businesses have capital constraints, but that just means they are healthy businesses. We should all know what happens when you give a startup too much money too fast.
You're kidding, right? He only had enough money to type up a PDF and cannot even afford to host it on its own site, he has to use his companies' sites.

http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-201...

http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/h...

It is on its face obviously severely capital-constrained.
I'm sorry my answer wasn't up to your standards. Please disregards my comments and continue with your surely Nobel-award research, Dr. crusso.
> And in an alternate reality the one destined to invent the warp drive gets killed by malaria on safari.

The thing about scientifc breakthroughs is that they are almost never dependent on a particular "brilliant mind"; they are the product of accumulated knowledge and technology reaching a critical mass. Notice how many things in maths and physics were (and are) co-invented by many people within short timespans. Even if our fictional warp field theorist got shot, someone else somewhere else in the world would build the drive five minutes later.
It seems SemiAccurate was...accurate - Microsoft just took Mantle and renamed it DX12, to call it their own "innovation":

http://semiaccurate.com/2014/03/18/microsoft-adopts-mantle-c...
Cheaper than $399 which is what the video says this will start from?
Agreed, but at this point, we should be getting users and things off XP, not on it.
Does anyone still wonder why regular people in the bay area hate the idea of Google and hot tech companies in general?
If its real, a citation would be great. Its a fantastic story worthy of sharing, (presuming its not a fabrication).
The federation challenge for TextSecure comes up a lot and IIRC it has to do with the fact that it's a SMS replacement so accounts are phone number and phone numbers aren't routable to the user's domain. If I understand correctly it would be like trying to deliver messages after truncating the "@blah.tld" part from a jabber/email address--lots of opportunity for shenanigans.
Precisely. It seems to me insane that there are Wozniaks out there who are undiscovered. We shouldn't need to depend on a Jobs to find an introverted genius. Woz could have done wonders at a Bell Labs or equivalent. He was successful regardless due to his interests being aligned with the growing microcomputer industry at the time, but he would not have been as lucky had he been born in another era.

My point is that we need research institutions with stable funding over long periods for talented people to push the boundaries of science, without relying on the circuses of VCs and Wall St.
Netbeans is by far the most powerful PHP IDE out there. The intellisense like search, jumping to definitions, code re-factoring, file search, integrated debugging, and code analysis makes everything else look like a joke.

It's not the most prettiest IDE out there, but it's free and open source. It's the visual studio of PHP and java, only better. And open source.
That hardly matters if lots of other people do.
What was the network utilization during the test? If these machines were lightly loaded (< 30% utilized) then the tail latency isn't surprising. :)
I did not see similar language in Google's ToS or Privacy Policy:

https://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/terms.html

However I read very quickly so please correct me if I'm wrong.
I guess Larry is like Carlos slim, doesn't think charity works: http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/10/15/worlds-richest-man-ch...

I don't agree but I wouldn't mind Elon Musk getting money for big projects that the gov't might have done in the past. Like Eisenhower's interstates/highway to something like Elon's electric highways. If there is more industry/market/inroads more people can make money and subsequently give to charity, not a select few. Rising tide lifts all boats, so that answer is both.
Thanks! I was mostly thinking about point 2, and I understand your motivations in going in a different direction after trying it. Very good and enlightening answer!
The reason 2012 XE54 was only detected two days before it passed the earth is because we currently are not flying the right instrumentation to detect such objects any earlier. Fixing that problem is the whole point of the B612 foundation's project. Also, an infrared telescope can be launched a hell of a lot sooner and cheaper than Mars can be colonized.
Yes, when stumbling across bad code, the first instinct should be: how can I make this simpler. Not how can I wrap this bad code in more convoluted patterns. Don't use a big word when a small one will do.

Additionally, I find that the key problem with bloated models stems from missing domain models (often has-many-through models). Not from moving the logic of the existing models into more noun classes. In your example here, the purpose of the ticket is to tie a user to a grouper: that's exactly the place to put logic that governs that connection!

Finally, what gets my goat is this notion that these patterns are necessitated by "advanced deployments". As it was some law of nature that when your app hits a certain size, you have to introduce this litany of misfit patterns. That's like arguing that if your book is longer than 300 pages, it must also use really big words and complex sentence structures. What?

The solution to large applications is to double down on simplicity, not give up on it. It is even more important to get the basics right. Execute them beautifully before even contemplating to freewheel from there.
You do have recourse, and it certainly can be illegal.

Just because corporations have a Russia-in-Crimea style boots-on-the-ground advantage when it comes to the cloud doesn't mean you have to throw up your hands and give up when someone violates your rights.
This is my favorite version of the game, with the doge version coming in a very close second.
I literally had to think...what is Expedia?
Carmack is actually a hard worker and writes code. Too often in the tech industry you bump into people who are "architects" and "strategists" and not hands on at all, or what this article may refer to as a "genius".
Now that sounds like an eternity.