skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not that it's any of my business, but I've found that putting too much effort into rebutting naysayers tends to just make me come across as combative and hurts my credibility. I address them at times, but I try to keep it to a minimum.

Anyway, would love to hear your thoughts (or links to anything already on your site that might be relevant) on trying to monetize a site that's primarily a grass roots movement and which is targeted at an audience somewhat predisposed to say "If you are trying to make money off me, you are a snake oil salesman and can't be trusted!" I've made it clear to people that I have no plans to cut my own throat for their benefit and this (and other stuff) has helped some with public relations. I know I still have major issues in terms of not yet having a steady pace of updates. But even if I did, I know of sites with tons of traffic that aren't well monetized. I want to avoid that fate. I know a few webmasters who are rather bitter about the time and effort they have put into a "labor of love" and the lack of money and lack of (official) recognition it has gotten them.

Anyway, sorry if this is kind of rambling. Thanks in advance if you bother to reply at all. :-)
Quote:
Apparently people in their 20s are a bunch of entitled whiners.

Judging by the tone of this article I have to say, yes, his premise is dead on.

Someone fix the headline: College boy finds out that life isn't fair, cries a river.
> ... but there is no guarantee that any such explanation could be constructed, and I am considering the scenario in which it can't.

Are you serious?
I'm trying to understand how this differs from http://www.tripit.com/
When it comes, be sure to post it here :D
Pure MVC isn't possible for most Javascript apps,
because the Model lives on the server.

Not entirely true. It actually depends on the nature of the application. In some cases, where feasible, you can easily use a Client-Side Persistent Storage or Google Gears as the Model.
A lot of 20-somethings — especially the ones with natural intelligence — grew up jumping through hoops. An adult puts up a hoop, you jump through it. A clear series of steps. Take the tests, ace the classes, get into the good college. It's clear what you're evaluated on, and it's clear what you have to do to ace the evaluation.

But once kids get out of college, no one's putting up hoops anymore. No one's telling you "Do x, then y will happen." And a lot of people have no idea what to do if the hoops aren't being put up by someone else. Making your own hoops — being able to do anything and not necessarily getting clear, immediate positive reinforcement that you've chosen correctly and done well — is simply not something that a lot of people are good at.

Maybe that's related to the upbringing of today's 20-somethings and maybe it's not, but being a member of that group myself, it does seem like a widespread phenomenon.
I used to work at epic on UE3 and can say that there's a LOT of engineering and considerations that go into keeping the engine flexible and usable for so many different types of games.

As a programmer on UE3, part of my job was spent responding to licensee questions on mailing lists (usually within a fixed timeframe), looking into bugs that held up QA'd releases (once a month code drops to licensees). Epic really does take the concerns of its licensees seriously. The idea is that helping licensees ship successful games using UE3 can only help Epic's business and image.

Also, one of UE3's biggest sell points was the tools. The tools are what helps get UE3 in the door over other tech. UnrealEd was designed to be WYSWIG and to help artists create as much content as possible with programmer intervention. Massive parallelization of teams is what helps save cash and ship games quickly this gen. However it's really up to the licensee to use the tech to its fullest. Many teams just take our demo tech and modify it a bit to meet their needs. The business reasons for doing this are obvious (ship fast!), but it's not really indicative of what the engine is fully capable of.
I bet success does feel better than failure. And not because you get more credibility, either :)
I think tripit tells you delays when the airline/faa actually announces delays, vs flightcaster which tries to do it earlier.
Taleb really did predict 7 out of the last 2 recessions.
Google Search for the Lisp Hyperspec and "The Art of MOP"
I love programming competitions, and they have provided me with some of the most valuable experience I've ever had.

I spent a couple of years working on programming problems with my university's ACM contest team, and I've never had a chance to work with a keener group of hackers. We spent hours and hours a week in the computer lab practicing, figuring out difficult bugs, improving each other's code, and just working on random side projects.

It's a bit intimidating to work alongside world-finalist programmers, who sometimes seem to be able to pull solutions out of thin air, but after a while, you start to pick up on how everyone on the team has a unique and valuable way to approach problems.

And that's the most valuable thing. Since
I've left school, I've learned great stuff about business, design, people, and usability. But I'll never again have such a pure immersion into the art of coding.
1. It's fairly clear a decent portion of the 20 somethings coming out of school now are entitled and don't work hard.
2. It's fairly clear that a lot of the 30 and 40 somethings out there came out of school, gave up their souls and worked for the man and regret it--in other words they weren't entitled enough.
3. It's fairly clear this story has nothing to do with the folks reading Hacker News who are a self-selected group of entrepreneurial folks who are hard working and self-motivated.

Please move along, nothing to see here.
4 More Questions to Ask Before Joining a Software Company
I can download TV shows and movies on my 3GS over the air.
"Got a Mac or a PC? Cool. Use Linux? Go fuck yourself!"
There's something about Todoist's hierarchical functionality that I really love. It's def not the best out there, but by far the best organization oriented task list manager.

http://www.todoist.com
Tech specs disclosed only after contract signing are binding on licensee
We do. Email me stormpulse at gmail for details.
Well as I understood it the video highlighted that higher dimensions were about quantum implications (different possible universes) rather than anything spacial.
The shot fraction graph doesn't hold any water. Ray Allen's shot fraction is likely to be the highest when his teammates are performing poorly -- thus he has to take on more of the burden himself. The effect may not be due to him at all, but rather that when 4 players are playing poorly, the team tends to lose.
The article linked to at the end (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/16/our_gim...), interestingly, is complaining about a group of young people who are asking Congress for this list of "youth bailouts":

Among other things, the coalition wants: free college tuition for low-income students who are willing to do volunteer work; the right to be covered in their parents' health insurance program until the age of 26; college loan-forgiveness programs for young people who agree to serve distressed communities after graduation; and micro loans for young entrepreneurs to start their own businesses.

... Frankly, those all sound like far smarter, better initiatives than propping up failing car manufacturers (which are, coincidentally, dominated by an older generation) or expanded government health coverage (which also disproportionately benefits older people). If that's what the 20-somethings of today "feel entitled" to, I feel pretty good about being a part of the group.
When is demo day by the way?
> Do you think everyone whose home this has been parked in front of smashed that car up?

How many people's home was this parked in front of? Do you think cops went around parking cars in front of people's homes to intimidate random people?

> Do you think they were all guilty of the "crimes" that they haven't even been charged with?

Did I say that? Did I even imply that?
You think I am one of those "sacrifice liberty for a little security people"? Don't assume that's what I'm arguing for. As far as the cases in the article mentioned, yes. It's a controversial topic and I understand a lot of people have strong emotions over it. And the action these cops took might seem like it's leaning towards the wiretapping camp but it's not. I do think they were all guilty. There was a complaint and someone called the cops to help. They did. As for their specific usage as described in the article (mostly) I think it's perfectly fine.

> No, they'll stay in poor/minority neighborhoods, where people will have the choices of taking it or moving.

Is that what happened? No. So I don't even know why you brought that up.

I know what you're talking about though. If cops decided to target minority neighborhoods simply because minorities have a higher chance of criminal activity it would be a point of contention for me too. But that's not what the cops did in the article. They answered a cry for help. They knew there was problem in the area. And yes the last thing the cop did where she parked that car in front of that house was a little iffy, assuming she wasn't sure if a drug dealer actually lived there.
Could the sale of Mars Tree Seeds fund a private sample-return mission to Mars -- or at least to Martian orbit and back (as with these moon seeds)?
Plan on using an ATM again? This is how your info can be stolen
Before I read Flatland, I had never seen a book which combines Victorian social satire with mathematical pedagogy.
explains why BOA attaches all sorts of funny devices on their ATM machines. but i think your neighbourhood/nightclub atms are perfect targets for these criminals. ugh
Most assuredly, I absolutely don't want anyone to take away that it was a completely negative experience. Those where some of the best times in my career. Every change you make, you can literally feel the money role in and you are in complete control of the decision making process. You are in it together and it is a conquer the world attitude. The best friends I have ever made, where bonds built in those companies. That said, I think the parent posters comment is often overlooked by the inexperienced, in the quest for the one hit. I am now a VP of a fortune 100 company due to the experience I gained in those companies and my track record of hitting it 3 times. I just wanted to highlight that even upon success, if the timing of entry is not right you may only walk out with some good resume fodder and enough to float you to the next gig.
RealClimate: Resolving technical issues in science
I believe private insurance for 20-somethings is very cheap.

Anyway, health care. I think old people understand that the system is kind-of, sort-of insolvent already, and that expanding it will probably push it over the cliff at a bad time for them. Being shrill and ranty is all well and good, but other people have their worries, too.
Neat idea. I think it will be really useful if you provide a track record of what percentage of your predictions are right. Otherwise, this service is mostly going to be useful to business customers who buy flexible tickets. Someone like me, is not going to take a chance even if you say 80% probability of a delay on an economy class ticket.
I think emphasizing "fun" and "playing" misses the point. Take a step back. The web browsing experience on the iPhone is literally an order of magnitude better than what came before. The screen is huge and gorgeous and responds to your touch. The interface and apps, by and large, are super-slick and polished in all respects. So of course it's "fun"! But these are also the reasons it's tremendously "usable" as a device.

It's ridiculous to pick on the iPhone for its "swipe" and "shake" gestures, declare it "hard to use", and look for some other adjective that doesn't have to do with usability to explain its strengths.
Isn't string theory unscientific?
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Like OP, I busted my butt in pursuit of a better future, graduated with an BS in Math and an MBA just to work at Denny's for 18 months before finding my first programming job.

But I can't imagine ever writing a piece like this.

I have only one "understanding". No one is ever going to give me anything, so I just have to suck it up and get it for myself.

If OP perseveres for what he wants as well as he whines, problem solved.

Oh and by the way, I got my MBA and worked at Denny's in 1978, so STFU and get busy.
The more I ponder it the more I am curious just how this would turn out. Would it be like usability tests were in round 5 the team is screaming at the team member behind the sound proof glass while he fumbles around? Would each group end up with their own version of "The Little Manual of API Design" tweaked for their language/tools? Would writing tool #2 actually be harder than #1?
Tomorrow!
(Just FYI, you can always edit your comment within the first hour of posting it.)
"But how did medieval Europe stop being medieval Europe? The answer is through protectionism"

That is false. Protectionism may (or may not) have helped specific industries in individual countries, but it was net harmful for medieval Europe, because nearly all international trade in medieval Europe was with other European countries.

It's a very interesting question how medieval Europe stopped being medieval. The short version is peace and trade. When society is dominated by local warlords, you tend to have neither. Europe's rise out of medievalness was basically achieved by an alliance between medieval kings and a growing merchant class. The kings used the wealth of the merchants to increase the power of the central goverment, which then protected the merchants from the random exactions of over-powerful nobles.
FYI, glycine is the smallest amino acid, its chemical formula is C2H5NO2. color me surprised when they find tryptophan on a comet
Michael Spivak's Calculus text:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0914098918
Diary of a Social Venture Start-up: Early Mistakes
I know. I read it. My point was that he thinks that because he thinks that Taleb is simply saying 'shit happens'. He's not. We believed in the Gaussian curves and risk measured in standard derivations. We believed VaR and it ate us for lunch. If it's not very useful or original, September would not have proved him out so well.
It is important to understand that the many-worlds interpretation makes no claims about where those worlds exist. The video proposes a heirarchical order to the universes --- a metaphysical filing cabinet. It labels them; it does not aid in their visualization.

[Note that all ten of string theory's dimensions would need to be reproduced in each alternate universe --- not the other way around.]
I can't agree with your sentiment. :(

Your have an interesting anecdote but it is just that -- a special case. You might as well say that prayer works.

Given the ratio of ground breaking theses compared to all the rest that are it is safe to say that no one will read a given thesis. At least, the chances are effectively 0. The sad part is that even if it is a good thesis it still won't ever see the light of day.
True, that's one possible explanation -- but it seems a stretch to me.

On the other hand, if the actual goal is not to increase the workforce size as such, why not just set up the criteria to reflect what your actual goal are?

That is, if your goal is to prevent "brain drain", why not specifically state the criteria in terms of loss of personnel possessing unique expertise. The criteria as stated would let us be perfectly willing to throw one Feynman under the train in order to save two cafeteria dishwashers.
I am flying this Friday so I will make sure to test it out. That's a pretty steep price for the iPhone app though... if you guys can recommend me alternative routes then that would be worth paying for, but at the current stage I don't see myself paying for an app just to check if my flight will be delayed or not.

When I was a consultant, I used to travel every week. What irritated the heck out of me is these in-route weather conditions. So for instance, if I am flying from Dallas to NY, and there's bad weather somewhere in the middle, they will cancel the flight. If you can recommend me to get on a flight that will go around the problem (such as Dallas -> Miami, Miami -> NY), then it would be really useful. But this is probably only useful for business travelers since casual travelers probably won't be willing to shell out the extra airfare.
hey david, drop me an email j@jasonlbaptiste.com Your contact form was too long and I don't trust those things to not be black holes :-P.
As I recall, having eyes fairly close together (not on seperate sides of the face) is something which tends to be associated with predators/carnivores, while herbavores tend to have their eyes very far apart to increase the area which they can locate things - like predators - in.

In other words, if you want to see everything around you, your eyes should be far apart, but if you want to be very good at focusing on something you're hunting, they should be closer together.

Though I don't remember where I heard this, and hence cannot provide a citation.
I can't help but imagine pilots checking the statuses of their own flights, thousands of feet up in the air, punching the gas to beat their odds.

Congrats on launching!
I guess I have a little taste of what the guys who went thorough school using slide rules felt like when calculators that could do trig functions came out.

I went through high school trig, calculus, and undergraduate college math classes with nothing more than a standard 10-digit "scientific" calculator. Graphs? You plotted those with a pencil.
Did you do the Haskell one as well?
But I guess some people use programming contests as a measure of your programming skill. The implication I got was that success in programming contests doesn't necessarily correlate with development aptitude.
no it's not, b/c crimes have not actually been committed yet, which is why the van is just sent out and nobody is arrested.
Philosophic Roots of the Rejection of Physical Causation in 20th Century Physics
Heh I thought this was sarcasm/satire (especially given the million edge cases) but it's not a terrible idea as you say.
So harsh.
One of the best rants ever! Now on my bulletin board. I thought I had seen it all, but OP puts me to shame.

This is one of those rare pieces that could be titled, "Don't let any of these things happen to you." Great education for anyone writing fulfillment systems.

And +1 for "If a man in Brazil is coughing then the remote file doesn't get deleted."
My point is that harassment is harassment so why are you not willing to make a bold statement advocating it across the board if you think it's harmless?
In the US at least, photography on public property does not require the permission of the subject, otherwise photography in crowded tourist spots would be well nigh impossible. There are of course exceptions, such as when the subject expects privacy (even in public, upskirts are no good), when you are making a profit from your photographs (which will then require model releases), or when "national security" is involved. (ref http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm )

In the UK it is approximately the same, with the addition that the subject may not be harassed (defined as behavior that causes alarm or distress over multiple incidents) (ref http://www.sirimo.co.uk/2009/05/14/uk-photographers-rights-v... )

I've found the relevant laws regarding photography in Canada (http://ambientlight.ca/laws.php), and it seems to follow the US and UK in general. Therefore I think there are unspecified extenuating circumstances in the case of the photographer that got fined $1000.

Ever since 9/11 there has been increasing scaremongering regarding people using "professional" looking cameras, which is an erosion of rights with no real benefits.

I wouldn't photograph something I don't own, or that no one owns
This would restrict you to photography only within your house, with all the shades drawn. Maybe even with the TV off.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=771200
Ask HN:  A game to show users every iPhone app in a quick and interesting way?
The idea is to present every iPhone app in a quick and interesting way so that users have a good idea of what's in the app store.

How can one capture the user's attention so that he/she would spend the hours required to go through all the apps?

Perhaps one can use a game that rewards the user for remembering presented apps.
Thank you for writing LYSE! This was my first exposure to the syntax and design behind Erlang, and it's really interesting to see the influence of Prolog shining through. I'm looking forward to the future chapters!
You have it under a fairly tight CC license. Is my automatically ripped PDF version legit enough?

http://kmkeen.com/mirror/lys_erlang_fgg.pdf

It was an enjoyable read.
Not relevant to the OP as he lives in Melbourne, Australia. The ATO (our IRS) already requires that this income is declared.
Yes, it's harassment. Have you ever been harassed by police? I have, and it is not fun.

I'm a typical HN reader who does not engage in any criminal behavior... yet on a few occasions I've been the victim of cops who are on a power trip. These experiences taught me that the less power police have the better.

If the cops can't do real police work and solve a crime and arrest someone, they have no business messing with anyone...
Startups: Working in "bizarro world"
The seeds never actually made it to the surface of the Moon. They stayed with Roosa, orbiting the Moon 34 times in a metal cylinder. So technically they are more space trees than Moon trees.
Radiohead Leak Their New Track To BitTorrent
No, no, no. This blasted video (which just won't stay down) is anti-knowledge. It leaves the viewer with the satisfied feeling that they understand something deep and profound, while actually leaving them less informed about mathematics and physics simultaneously, in that it builds in resistance to the actually true and correct ideas. This has no value whatsoever, not even to attract people to the field, since the field it is espousing does not exist. In fact, it has less than no value. It is one of the most pernicious memes of this type I have ever seen.

Watch this video, if only so you know what sort of total bullshit you need to watch out for if you try to learn about real physics or math. See that feeling it gives you, that feeling of understanding? Train yourself to run from it, because it's wrong.
This is a not a very solid claim. The difference in calculations using a distribution with a finite variance versus one with an infinite variance could not be more different.

The approximation is not done for closeness, because they are not close at all, but for convenience and simplicity. Probability theory is amazingly difficult when you are dealing with infinite variance.
Yes and no. There are currently no known ways to verify it epxerimentally, but, on the other hand, the theory has recently used to explain high-temperature superconductivity: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090706113702.ht...
"As far as I'm concerned, nobody is a drug dealer until the police have caught them dealing drugs."

Which is clearly false.

"Then use existing laws or HOA rules about trash and noise."

How do you make a noise survey without surveilling people. How do you know which house to surveille without listening to the neighbours?
Woah, thanks! The Cyberiad is one of my all time favorites. If the rest are as strong as it, that's a serious list.
I can think of about 10-15 people worldwide who might be interested in my thesis, and since 3 of them are going to be examiners and all of them know each other it seems like a pretty quick way to disseminate the information. Well, except for the writing time... :)