skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> 1. A linear mapping is not a "kind of equivalence" by any reasonable definition. For instance, the function that maps every vector to 0 is a linear mapping, and it has plenty of eigenvectors. (All with eigenvalue 0.)

Linear mappings are the homomorphisms between vector spaces. So they are a "kind of equivalence".

See for example http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Linear_Algebra/Definition_of_Ho...
> Handwriting analysis tells everything about that person.

Oh really? I can change my handwriting at whim. I'm pretty sure that my personality doesn't change that fast.
The longest yard and a half
The comments about alienating the development community aside, the post just seems to be the constantly rehashed "it has no revenue model, thus it will fail," argument. I don't necessarily disagree, but I certainly don't think this blog post adds anything to the conversation.
This isn't a political article. Its author has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic political causes, but the article itself is almost completely opposed to the Democratic Party's thoughts on health care.

Instead, this is an article about business, efficiency, the impact of IT and modern business process on health care, and the impact our current system has on consumers and businesses.
I think you are correct, but I'm disappointed about that.

I think the crux of my disappointment is your statement:

They're acting wholly rational under the rules of capitalism.

Yup, they are. Unfortunately companies have many more resources (time and money) to expend creating this kind of value than most consumers have to guard against it.

If we could remove this kind of "value" from our system we would all have a lot more free time (and less jobs). A good or a bad thing depending on your perspective on the necessity of having a job.
I'm not sure if you could find any larger assumptions?

Perhaps baryonic assymetry is only a local feature creating completely different structures in the observable universe. Perhaps past expansion is far accelerated or the acceleration increase and decrease over time. Perhaps "c" is not a constant.

The work of Barrett et al. "Undermining the cosmological principle:[...]" shows that minimal fluctuations in CDM does not necessarily show isotropy and homogeneity.

Add to this that observable matter is postulated to be < 5% of the universe and we don't really have a handle on dark matter. We don't even know for sure how many dimensions there are ... we're pretty clueless really.
There are no set topics on hacker news for a reason. As I understood it, the main criteria was for submissions to be intelligent and informative. This article is one of the most rational discussions of the US health care system I have seen, and it's worth reading if you want to find out how it works.

I think the key is that every story on the home page helps you to better understand how something works or why something happened. You know, the hacker part of "hackernews".

We should probably save the flags for stories that are being manipulated by spammers or small groups. Anything else will rotate off the home page in a few hours anyway.
I love this kind of TED talks.

One of Alain's main arguments was that the "kinder, gentler" philosophy of success should partly be based on the negative implications of meritocracy, i.e. "if you are at the bottom, you deserve to be there and thus you're a looser". But to meritocracy's defense -- isn't it more fair to say that "if you are at the bottom, you can with an effort pull yourself out of there"? And thus "merit" a better position in the social hierarchy?

For me, once anyone at the bottom make the slightest effort to rise, they are instantly rising in social hierarchy. Thus, it's all up to themselves, and it's all based on a choice. Make a decision, and merit follows.

I'm not sure what I want to say with this argument. But somehow, the criticism forwards meritocracy seemed a little shallow in the talk.
I just bought my pass! I've mapped it out already (http://www.everlater.com/ryanwanger/jetblue-all-you-can-jet-...) and I'll be documenting it as I go.

Disclaimer: I work for Everlater. But of course, this is why we built it!

I tagged the description of my trip with #AllYouCanJet so if anyone else does it, I can create a page of trips from others doing the same.
> People need to be paying far less for preventative care out of pocket. When they have to pay for preventative care, a lot of them (especially low income) just skip it.

We've posted the links repeatedly - preventative care improves quality of life but doesn't reduce cost.

And, pre-natal care is FREE in the US, yet many poor folks don't bother.

In other words, both assumptions for your argument are false.
Indeed Scheme (and SICP) would be a good choice; at least I wish I knew that back when I started out with C -- can be done, but don't do it.
Besides Scheme, Clojure (which is also a LISP) provides the added benefit of having full interoperability with the JVM; I'm currently giving it a try, and it does seem worth the time and effort, quite the humane choice I'd say for a first language. VB6 of course does not count.
In "A Breif History of Time" Stephen Hawkins states that time travel isn't impossible. If you can travel in time, you can go faster than light -- in the sense that temporal relations (such as "faster") lose their absolute meaning. If I need to go 100 lightyears (and can travel at c), I'll transport myself back 100 years and hit start. To a by stander, I'd have gone there in zero time.
"Free copies of content are going to be what you use to establish your fame. Then you go out and milk it"

Piracy is your friend.
It is designed...

Ho, stop, by who? The lay-out isn't very appealing and looks like it's still under construction.
I get the idea of the site, but, what do you want to say with it?

People who care about open-ness of their 'to-buy'-device are more likely to do their own research, this site helps with that, but does it really fill a gap?
So I don't want to burst your bubble (I've got the pass too), but almost zero of those trips are direct. Everything goes thru Boston, NY, or Long Beach...and the west coast stuff is really limited.

For example, Vegas to Denver goes through BOS/NYC, Denver to Salt Lake is the same, etc. etc. etc.

:-(
I understand the concern, but you do realize that Sprint could already grab your location from the cell tower ID if they were so inclined?

(Not to mention every page you visit in the browser...)
Where in Canada? Looking for someone with Python experience in Vancouver.
Startups have to work hard, but how much work is too much?
He wasn't exactly best friends with the sanhedrin (sp?, the powerful self-serving hypocritical religious leaders) in His day either; they turned him over to the Romans to be crucified after all. Upsetting holy applecarts was pretty much his thing ...
Never too old
I actually have the appname.com already :)
Geocities is a good example of a past bottleneck - we agree there.

Facebook might not be a perfect example - I think Twitter is probably better since it's more of a platform.
The pass only covers domestic travel so Bogotá is out.
You are right. That's not a problem, though. Terms like `dike', `nigger' or `swiss' where entirely negative in the beginning, too. Now you can see some of them as self-designations.
Hey, don't underestimate the importance of the cask/barrel!
His "off-the-grid" system is really not very innovative (for an inventor that is). He should consider finding another means to store his reserves beside using a massive battery bank.

Some ideas:

1. Large Flywheel (on magnetic bearings, in vacuum)

2. Water Tower (pump sea water up to a tall tower, release at night)
Yesterday didnt she (or one of her cohort) claim that the great man professor hawkings would have been considered "not worth" keeping alive by state healthcare like the UK's NHS. And for this reason state healthcare was a bad idea.

I seriously distrust anyone can get their facts THAT wrong :)

(for those that dont know Hawkings lives in the UK and has been cared for by the NHS for all his life... :))

EDIT: oh it was a business insider editorial; one of my friends miss-blogged that it was Palin writing.#

She still exhibited a huge lack of knowledge about our system though.
The easier it is to flip around and hold with one hand while maintaining it's sensitivity and functionality, the more successful it will be.

On of the issues with tablets is how heavy they are to hold (speculation only -- never owned anything like it before, unless you count the iphone or any other device with a touch-sensitive screen as a mini-tablet of sorts).
A few meters is the absolute best case.

In a city, you've got to deal with buildings and structures. Outside a city, you often have to make do with fewer than 3 visible signals.
I'm hoping that he's turning into a Bond villian, considering the alternatives. He's been building terminator-style arms for a while now, out in the open, hiding in plain sight.
I have just finished reading "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" which I thought was fantastic. Particularly the chapter where he follows a high voltage electricity line across southern England until it disappears underground in London. He walks with a man who's a 'pylon geek' essentially and it's wonderful.
Ditto on the last point. It doesn't seem to be about hardware compatibility as such, rather some intangible "openness" quality. If I were interested in the openness as an inherently valuable trait, then I would probably care about other things like the ethical and environmental credentials of the manufacturer (because I probably care about non-functional traits). If I'm looking for information on the ability of my hardware to interact with particular software, then surely the "hardware compatibility" section of that software's web site would be my first place to look? I guess I just don't see the gap that this is filling.

I like the idea of power plug proprietary-ness being written down somewhere, but if it were a real problem, I could probably find that information in user reviews on Amazon or similar.

So I'm just not sure that I can think of any instances where I would want to use a site that only tells me about the ideological aspects of my purchase, without particular reference to what the real hardware/software compatibility situation is, and which similarly doesn't give you the whole story in terms of whether I should buy from this manufacturer or not.

So in short, I wouldn't use it, sorry.
Unless you want to drink sweet sludge, you better make sure there is some yeast involved as well. ;-)
Fab@Home dream project: chocolate easter bunnies with anatomically correct frosting organs.
Both CDMA and GSM phones use encryption by default. It's not the strongest or best implemented encryption, but it makes it pretty tough. GSM is pretty tricky to demodulate even without encryption.
The difference between IE6 and IE7 is like the difference between a grain of wheat and risen dough, neither is a loaf of bread [standards compliant browser] but the later is not far off.
> the part that would work

Well, for people with enough money, at least. For others it might not "work" because they would die.

Which is why the OP suggested a solution that was mostly market based, but with some thought given to those who would be excluded by the market.
Touching the Hot Stove – Experiential versus Theoretical Learning
I registered .com, .co.uk and .net when we started. We got an email today from a hosting company saying someone is trying to register .cc, .asia, .com.cn and 5 others. Someone has already bought .cn.
Do some Project Euler problems in it:

http://projecteuler.com/
Wow, what a horrible response. Sometimes its better to admit you are wrong, and didn't mean Facebook and FriendFeed. By ANY measurements (viral success or otherwise) Facebook is more successful than twitter.
Erm, there's a sort of gradient with free market on one end and government control on the other. "Injecting government control" puts you at a different level on that gradient than you would be in a purely free market.

"Conservatives" don't hold a monopoly on using a market. In most cases, they're not even completely in the "free market" portion of the gradient.

Please stop with the partisan labels. They're really not all that helpful.
On a somewhat related note: as computer scientists, we're usually dealing with discrete data, so correctness comes naturally to us with discrete problems.

The problem with floating point numbers is that most mathematical operations on them are approximations. People expect the same kind of correctness from floating point arithmetic that we've come to expect from integer arithmetic, when you really should be thinking in error bars.

I mean, just ask the average programmer to do currency math and I assure you they'll go straight for the `double`. Most of the time, not a catastrophic error, except for when it is.

For the curious, this is a long but very thorough overview of floating point arithmetic and it's quirks:
http://docs.sun.com/source/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html
You're also able to lease many of them now. It's usually about the cost of a car payment. A Dimension machine would run you just under $300/month.
Ask HN: Tips for coding at the beach (or in the sun)
For the past few months, I've become a total beach bum, hanging out at the beach 3-4 days a week either playing or watching volleyball.

That said, I'd like to be able to head to the beach and work some, but my laptop is all but completely unreadable in the sun (especially with a glossy screen, which in the sun, practically becomes a mirror).

So what tools do you guys know of or use for coding and/or general purpose computing with a laptop in the sun?

I've read a handful of articles online (always google first) all with decent advice and product recommendations, but I'd prefer some insight straight from the gritty (sandy?) trenches. Any clever hacks you folks use?
Wallet of the future? Your mobile phone
Cool... except for the name. How about something pronounceable (you know, for kids). Logo in python syntax with missions- exactly what I'm going to need for my kids.
Traveling Salesman Problem Documentary?

At each stop, interview researchers about their P,NP problems. =D
Great points. I'd just like to add that the key here is to be cost conscious - i.e. cheap.

One of Joel's better articles for those that haven't read it explains why: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...
It is easy to interpret some of what he said as a criticism of meritocracy, but I don't believe there was any. I think what he was trying to say is that meritocracy is great, but we often use the concept to justify cruel attitudes or judgments.
School vouchers to promote competition in schools is, IMO, a "libertarian solution", and one worth thinking about. School vouchers to get kids out of studying evolution and into bible classes is a much murkier idea, but one that I fear is the reason behind a significant portion of Republican backers of similar initiatives.
single page link: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/empire-off-the-gr...
Ruby 5 Podcast - Episode #1
Sorry, I should have disclaimed. The site is very much alpha, so there are plans for a layout overhaul still. We've only just got something basic working and wanted to get some feedback before continuing.

As someone who's done a lot of research into how open a device is before they buy, I've found that I spend a lot of time searching for products which meet my needs. The site should help cut down the time needed in order to find open products.

Whether it fills a specific gap is debatable. Perhaps we should look at building the user-driven 'review' aspect of the site more, and let people discuss functionality more.
Have you considered sitting under a small canopy or umbrella? I did that for a week at the beach, and it solved the glossy-screen problem quite well. Just make sure your back-light brightness is turned all the way up. Since rugged laptops that don't let dirt in easily can get very expensive, I wrapped mine tightly in a plastic bag on the way down to the beach, and while I was working, only exposed what I really needed. I kept the plastic wrapped around the outside, and over the edges as much as possible. Even so, I made sure I gave my keyboard a good vacuuming each night.
My short though experienced advice for anyone thinking about making a go a enterprise software: Don't.
Redesign: Divvyshot Friends Page
What Came Before the Big Bang?
I arrive at your site and have no idea what it does.
I'm assuming you are at twitter.com/alaskamiller I just followed you. Hope you can tweet about your experiences on this trip so I can live vicariously through you.
That's what I thought while reading it. It seems more like his "Neverland" than anything actually groundbreaking. Just a buch of expensive geek toys on his island helecopter destination.
People come to X for their vacations for a couple of weeks; they see X and then comment without understanding the complexity of X. They compare X with Y, Z, etc. Every such writer point out problems (Easiest task in the world) but no one try to give single solution. They even don't understand X is having such a diversified culture with such a large population. If I replace population and diversity of X with Y, i don't think even Y can survive.

(I'm not saying you're wrong, maheshs; I'm actually agreeing, just in a larger context, and it's worth highlighting that larger context. In fact, as an American I observe that I can't fully understand the US; I seriously doubt "an Indian" has India all figured out, either. 300 million is a lot of people, and India's got another multiplicative factor on top of that.)
Octopart launches Company Tools, allows part suppliers to easily upload data
230 MPG? Stop the Madness Here's How the EPA Should Rate Range-Extended EVs
You probably can't get this exact number, but maybe you can find a proxy.

Why do you care about median profit? Are you thinking about producing a large number of median apps? The median for any category seems like it would be some meaningless low number like $10.
He _did_ say "public, realtime stuff."
I read that one recently too. I liked it... something pleasantly British about it (I don't know how else to describe it).
I don't have a pre, but I want to get to the bottom of this. The interwebs is saying that this is enabled by default, not by user prompt. Can you clear up my confusion? It's a propmt when you first turn on the phone? Does the carrier maybe turn it on before sending the phone (for some carriers) causing the confusion?
I think it's just that you're measuring overall success of the site (where you're undoubtedly correct), and he's talking specifically about the real time aspects (in which he is undoubtedly correct.)
The Value of Statistics
One distinction that is useful is looking at things in absolute terms or in terms of rankings. In a ranking system, someone is always going to come out the winner, and someone on the bottom. At the Tour de France, someone wins, a bunch of other guys don't, and someone comes in last, even though they are all extremely talented and fast cyclists. In business, someone might make the most money, but most people doing good work create value for society, and increase total wealth, without it necessarily being at the cost of someone else.

In other words, ranking systems and contests are zero sum games, whereas plenty of other things are not.
if there was a way to make it so that the cell provider didn't know where I was, I'd want that too.
Don't you trust our mother corporations?
Under No Circumstances Believe That You Need To Hire Rock Stars
Robots Get Their Own OS
I find them annoying too, but the safety advantage while riding on highways is clear. The safety of the rider is, in my opinion, of more importance than any mild annoyance a loud bike might cause. That said, I suspect, like you, that safety was not the reason a lot of riders picked a loud bike.
Frugality Tips For Startups
The thing I worry about is that these stories attract people interested in discussing politics, who in turn post more stories, which may not be quite as good, which in turn attract more people, and so on and so forth.

Politics/economics are low hanging fruit that anyone can dig up a story on and comment on. Erlang vs Scala in terms of creating distributed systems... not so much. The first will always crowd out the second, given enough time.
Flag power, go!
Focusing on pleasing the right critics
I'd suggest either Ruby or Python. Both have a pretty simple syntax, and are very self-consistent. In other words, there aren't too many rules to remember, and there aren't a lot of exceptions to the rules. I'd say that Ruby is a bit better as far as consistency is concerned, especially in that everything is an object.

I think Ruby probably has more advanced topics (especially meta-programming). I'm not sure if that's good or bad for a beginner. It's good in that you can keep learning and use the language for a long time. But it's bad that you won't understand everything for a while. That said, I was able to take advantage of the meta-programming that other people supplied (Ruby on Rails) just fine without understanding it at first. Now that I understand it, I find Ruby to be a very powerful language, while still quite simple to use. To me, it has the perfect balance of simplicity/elegance and power.
The python code mentioned is still susceptible to timing attacks. Not on the same scale as a bytewise, return on first inequality algorithms, but it's there. The return statement will take longer when the result value is 0, because then it will compare 2 lengths of strings. This could be enough to distinguish between correct and incorrect compares.

Since the usage of zip in that case will only compare the shorter of the strings to the start of the longer string, you can still achieve the timing attack, since the only inconsistency happens on the final comparison.

A better solution would be to check for length equality before doing the zip, or to pad the shorter of the strings compared to the length of the longer. Maybe also to just make the return statement:

return (len(a) == len(b)) and (result == 0)

which may be sufficient.
Microsoft is bringing Outlook to the Mac in 2010.
I think you're still fundamentally understanding what makes a specification different from "code".

A specification is to a program as a building plan is to a house.

I spend less effort on drawing the plan that I do into the house, although I wouldn't put anything into the plan that I don't want to end up in the house that will (eventually) be built.

Similarly, once the house is built, I can verify (presumably using a tape measure) that my house implements my building plans. But I can't live inside a blueprint.

So, while this is not a formal definition, I think a good (informal) means of distinguishing a specification from a program is that if the specification could be substituted for the program it is specifying, then it's probably not a specification in any useful sense. This is to negate the usual argument that "my poorly-hacked C code is the specification for my program".

The "push a button" argument is a bit of a red herring. "Pushing a button" is a convenient metaphor for "perform some low-effort, largely-mechanised process". If your complaint is that it's an over-simplification, perhaps it is worth thinking about what the intention of the article was. It's not a work of serious theoretical value - it's simply advocating an ideological position to an audience of programmers who don't already know about specification and think that it's a good idea.
I used to use Slackware and then Gentoo, but have been on Ubuntu for a while now.

I gave Arch a shot a few weeks ago, and I struggled to find a real advantage to using it.

What I did find instead, however, were a ton of broken packages because Arch had moved on to libjpeg7, but the packages hadn't.
Apple Cider Vinegar - How to Douche Yeast Infection Symptoms Away
It depresses me a bit that in college I knew exactly what all this was... for a month... until the day after I was tested on it.