skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> And there are theoretical limits to what you can do with lossless compression and I suspect that the algorithm in the show breaks those.

Compression schemes achieve better results the more they're tailored to the data you're compressing. The theoretical limits are not the issue.

For example, here's my compression algorithm for popular movies: You take the most popular 255 movies of all time as of a particular date and include an uncompressed copy of all of them within the compression algorithm itself. Then the compression scheme works as follows: If the first byte is not a zero, the decompression code will emit one of the 255 most popular movies, and the 255 possible non-zero values for the first byte identify which one. If the first byte is a zero, what follows is an uncompressed copy of a movie that is not one of the 255 most popular movies, and the decompression code merely strips the first byte.

Using that algorithm I can compress each of the 255 most popular movies into a single byte. That's basically the theoretical limit. You could create a compression algorithm that could compress every film ever released into maybe three or four bytes. The problem is naturally that such an algorithm is a) completely useless for all the films that haven't been released before the algorithm is created, and b) completely impractical because the compression algorithm itself is far too large to be distributed or stored efficiently. Because it's a trade off, and achieving the theoretical limit for data size takes the trade off too far in the direction of specializing the algorithm to the data.

But that doesn't mean there can't exist algorithms that make a more interesting trade-off than the existing ones do. Suppose you specifically design a compression algorithm for music. It's pre-programmed with the sounds made by common musical instruments and that are common in human singing. If the recording contains a guitar playing a G#, the algorithm identifies it as a guitar playing a G# and calculates the difference in pitch, volume, tempo, etc. between the recording and the idealized note built into the algorithm. That would be a significantly more complicated compression algorithm than most of those currently used, and it probably wouldn't get very good compression ratios for recordings of things other than music, but you would have something that could conceivably compress most music better than existing compression algorithms.
Is Google Fiber actually cheap or is it just passing on their regulatory savings to customers?
In my case, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 (as well as tons of random console games).
I've been mulling over this idea for a while now and actually have implemented a prototype. The current roadblock I run into, as someone said earlier in the thread, is the data sources. I've implemented a crawler that pulls from roughly 10 different sites, but clearly the custom crawling doesn't scale: there are just too many websites out there, and I don't have access to the crawling infrastructure of the Google/Bing size (both machine power and development effort).

I am thinking of making my prototype more human involved. For example, users (like you) could list the sites they often check for events, and maybe give the system some cue on how to extract the events from those sites. Another approach is MTurk which is something I'll try next.
I play games that my students make for me.

https://github.com/keshavsaharia/Zen
Hi aswin8728

So the Influencer would see the video request come in on Twitter where he can view it in line OR click the link and view it on a unique landing page.

There's a call-to-action in both options that prompts the Influencer to download the app in order to reply..

Here's an example of this already happening - https://www.chance.fm/w/679/
It was even funnier as a Chinese American. Made me feel a bit better about my lackluster proficiency in my "mother tongue".
I adored Ico, Shadow Of The Colossus, and the God Of War series, though I mostly played through them and was done. I keep going back to nethack from time to time...
Rook Media Acquires DomainSponsor from Oversee
I always try to unsubscribe first, and only when unsubscribing does nothing, then I proceed to mark the mail as spam.
2048 :)
I hate myself for saying this, but perhaps the only way to wake up these manufacturers is to make them liable for leaving the "security door" wide open. If they've followed good practices and at least tried to get things right, that should be a strong defense. But if they've completely ignored security, then they should be at risk too.
You can use http://www.google.com/ncr

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/873?hl=en
I love FTL, do you have any other games like it that you would recommend?
film42: I think it was driven by Slick and the need to accommodate database tables with more than 22 columns
Adding Visual Goodness to Your Ideas
It should look like a game you'd enjoy playing.

I like most genre of games, but fighting games, puzzle games, and JRPGs probably rank towards the top. I also love StarCraft 2.
Mulling over the Future of APIs – Panel Video
Show HN: RobotFindsKitten non-kitten-item server in Go
The Life of an Optimizer
Thank you so much!

(To answer your question: linear algebra and optimization. I do a lot of Numpy right now, and I see Eigen in my future...)
I play a lot of snes and nes games like:
- Legend of Zelda
- Super Mario World and 3
- Castlevania

Currently -> Legend of Zelda: A link to the past
The lack of an alphabet is not really a superficial point. That's a huge divide to begin with, and it only diverges further from there.
Thanks for your feedback.

Here's our answer to YC app on the chicken & egg issue:

Our idea does face a chicken-and-egg problem although not in the typical sense.

The 2 groups of users on Chance are Influencers (chickens) & Followers (eggs).

Since Chance is built on top of Twitter - a Follower is able tweet video requests to any Influencer through the Chance app, even if that Influencer has never used Chance before.

Through these Follower requests, the entrance of even just a handful of Influencers (chickens) into Chance has the potential to pull in 100s or even 1000s more Followers into Chance (eggs).

So our strategy initially will be to focus on getting:
A) Followers to request a chance with any of their Influencers already on Twitter.
B) To get pre-subscribed Influencers to broadcast/tweet their availability on Chance, which would immediately pull their followers in.
He was probably thinking of the official title "Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II"
Not a joke. Some appliances have what's known as "Sabbath mode", because of the Jewish restriction on doing work on the Sabbath. From Wikipedia: "When an oven is in Shabbat mode, the standard six- or twelve-hour automatic shutoff is overridden, and all lights and displays (for example, a light that might go on when the door is opened) are disabled."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_mode
The writer is pretty jealous of New York.
Show HN: Jollyshot – ephemeral image hosting
I actually don't really see any evidence in the article that the author believes any engineers would ever be happier in a smaller company. I'm not sure where you're seeing that softer view in the text. It's basically calling anyone who doesn't want to work for Google deluded.

It's not as if everyone in tech works for a startup, though I'm sure it often seems that way from the valley. Most likely the vast majority of engineers do in fact work for large companies, so the hysterical tone of the article only makes sense if you think even that small fraction of the industry that works at startups is fooling themselves about what makes them happy.

Of course, the article also seems to believe that most startup founders are engineers, and I'm not sure that's at all true either.
Vault of Satoshi Launches full Proof of Solvency (Not Just an Audit)
At Vault of Satoshi we have always tried to embody the mantra of being an open, honest and transparent exchange. We feel it's our duty to do so when you make the decision to place your funds in our hands.

For this reason we have long sought after a way to prove our reserves to the public in a safe and reliable manner, while most exchanges issue a third-party audit, we felt that simply wasn't open enough - so today at Vault of Satoshi we are proud to announce full proof of solvency and the publication of our cold wallet!

Users can self validate both their balance and the overall reserves of the exchange by navigating to our security center and selecting "BTC Proof of Solvency". From there, load the partial tree list, select "online tools" and copy paste in the relevant information to validate the holdings.

Note: While our secured cold wallet is listed and public, we have decided to not publish the hot wallet address for security reasons, and so the total value may have a discrepancy of up to 5-6%.
We at Vault of Satoshi want to thank you for your trust and your continued patronage. We will continue to take steps to be transparent and promote honest, customer oriented practices in the Cryptocurrency market.
I Still Use PHP – Jordan Koschei
I'll be more interested at the moment to see how recovered engines perform in "reused" state testing. Even the breakdown on the cost of refurbishment would be big news.
Oh wow, it never occurred to me that it would be Android only. iOS users are REALLY missing out. It's the best mobile chat experience I've ever had.
As a non-native English speaker, until recently I didn't know ee and i sounded different, eg: bee and bit. Someone explained to me that there are something like 30 vowel sounds in English. Y u no 1 letter = 1 sound???
I hate how far spread apart the JS community is but I'm excited for the day it starts to all come together and we don't have to worry about Javascript stacks becoming outdated within 6 months
This kind of "nitpicking meta bullshit" is valuable feedback to someone, like a startup, who might be marketing a product and hoping to not turn away customers. Sure, this particular thing isn't selling a product, but how many people would be turned away if it was?
because words can only mean one thing

Yes, definitions change, but that's sort of a reductionist statement. I could make an equally reductionist point about the acceptance of non-standard usage based on the fact two definitions of "nonplussed" are opposites. Nonplussed means not nonplussed.

I don't even think it would be hyperbolic to say the utility of using "hack" or "hacker" in a sentence has plummeted over the last decade because of it's everexpanding meaning.
Then it's bad, misleading, imprecise writing to say invariably. A single counterexample does disprove it, by the definition of the word. If the writer didn't want the argument blown up like that, he should have looked among the other hundreds of thousands of words in English to find one that actually does say what he meant.
He should also test switching to the slower-looking lane in anticipation of others switching to the faster-looking lane.
Thanks for the plug! In line with the original post, I'll add that the Ninja manual has a section where we try to convince you to not use Ninja and instead use a more common build system: http://martine.github.io/ninja/manual.html#_using_ninja_for_...
No, it wasn't meant as a joke. Exactly what activities are prohibited on days of rest is a matter of some debate [1], but the general attitude of the dorm tended to be that the bathroom server really wasn't that big a deal, so if anyone had a strong objection to it, then taking it offline (or disconnecting particular bathrooms) wasn't a problem.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activities_prohibited_on_Shabba...
The middle stall is the smallest ;)
This is a fantastic series - Class #4 "Last Mover Advantage" and a couple of the others are just great stand alone, but they are all good.

Here is the index: http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup
This sounds similar to the BBC Mastercrafts series:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qvrcj/episodes/guide

It came highly recommended to me, and the six episodes are sitting on my disk, but I haven't gotten around to watching any yet.
I did not mention MtGox.
Let me see, going to college and coming out with an insane amount of debt - to work as a writer. That sounds like pretty big gamble. Very, very few writers "make it big".
I love how he calls everything but Silicon Valley (a shitty fucking suburb) "the paper belt". He clearly doesn't understand what any of those other cities and industries do.
Make is still the best build tool form me.

https://algorithms.rdio.com/post/make/
It's a shame there's no accompanying rationale for any of these (cf. Google's C++ style guide [1]). Seems like a real challenge to maintaining relevant guidelines when change invalidates their underlying assumptions.

[1]: https://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide....
Another decent source: http://www.howstuffworks.com/lcd.htm
Im looking forward to playing with this!
Dark Souls series. Uncompromising challenges both mental and dexterous. Nothing else even comes close.
Hmmm, I don't know. When I install it on Windows Chrome, I immediately get an icon next to the URL bar. Sorry I can't be of more help.
Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News. We ban people for this, especially when they do not have a history as a positive contributor on the site.
Ok, but the GP said "Good luck unlocking/hacking an Apple device" not "... an Apple TV 3", implying that Apple devices are impenetrable fortresses of doom or something.

Full-blown iOS devices get jailbroken pretty quickly. I assume the difference here is that no one cares about the Apple TV, so there's little incentive to hack it (exaggeration, but the difference in Apple TV owners vs. iPhone owners is probably several orders of magnitude). Even if you did hack it, what's the point? There's no hard drive to store your pirated videos, and IIRC these things can stream videos from your PC out of the box anyway. If you're gonna install XBMC and bypass the Apple TV interface completely, why get an Apple TV in the first place?
I really liked 2048. Reached 4096 a couple times. Then, in a fit of sanity, deleted it.
Can the cloud make disaster recovery affordable?
Discussion: Browserify or RequireJs?
I'd love to hear the community's take on this. I'll also start a poll, but feel free to start a discussion!
Poll: Browserify
Poll: RequireJs
I've been waiting ages for flynn its an awesome project. I used Dokku and its lovely & its so simple.

Is there a way to install it manually on a server with stuff already on it?

Also is the source of the aws flynn.cupcake.io tool on github, it would be nice to see whats being installed onto an aws cluster.
English is actually a mixture of Anglo-Saxon (i.e., "real" English), Norman French (i.e., French as spoken by Danes), ordinary French, several Celtic tongues, various Scandinavian languages/dialects, Latin, Greek, German, and (more recently) everything from Yiddish to Mandarin.

If the word was from a language written in Latin script it often kept its original spelling even when that was contrary to what passes for English orthography. It's a big mess, but (usually) it works out.
I've played Go for as long as I've been a programmer, and I feel like it helps me with logic and reasoning and "big picture" thinking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)
>I found it a fast and easy tool for making and tweaking the UI. The IDE's integration of UI widgets and event-handling procedures was pretty slick too.

Yes, you're right. I found it so too. I forgot to mention in my parent comment that Delphi also generated the stubs/skeletons for the event-handling procedures. Not only was that a convenience, it helped with learning the tool and Windows GUI programming too.
When written Chinese was simplified there was a short-lived movement to move towards non-logographic system called Bopomofo or Zhuyin Fuhao which has the cool aspect of still looking non-Western, but being a phonetic system with unambiguous "spelling". My understanding though is that it still introduces significant issues with homophones (including tones) which is sorted out in written Chinese by unique characters.

It probably could have been resolved with superscript numbers and a strictly controlled dictionary that mapped each number to a specific dictionary definition for a homophone. But that's not what happened and instead we ended up with Simplified Chinese which is still among the most complex written languages ever created.

I believe it's still used in some dictionaries as a pronunciation guide however.

I can't speak for Chinese, but for Korean there's a large number of Chinese loan words, except spoken Korean doesn't have tones and it does introduce a number of comprehension issues when context is ambiguous and the different words are written with the same Hangul. This wasn't really an issue in the past as Korean used the Chinese system until Hangul started becoming more commonplace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/zhuyin.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters

http://hunjang.blogspot.com/2005/04/koreans-reading-comprehe...
I've been following Chinese lessons for 13 months now. One lessen every 2 weeks in a class with 3 people. Our teacher is Chinese.

I must say that I find Chinese to be refreshingly "easy". There is so little grammar and rules that I have fallen in love with the language from day 1. Just learn your words and draw your characters and you'll be fine.

Maybe it is because I'm Dutch and Dutch is known for being one of the hardest languages to learn? I don't really like Dutch actually. Also, I've spend a lot of time learning German, which isn't fun at all.

Or maybe I've just found the right teacher.
It just goes to show how inflexible Facebook is. In a flexible system, it would be trivial to create a custom feed out of other feeds. Yahoo Pipes and Google Reader both did this.
Words can have multiple meanings, but when a word can describe any situation, it carries no more information than the word "thing".
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary" -- James Nicoll

It's a messy language.
Google charges a $300 one-time install fee for the free 5 Mbps internet and $70 a month for the 1 Gbit internet (install fee waived). Many people have calculated that they are making up the costs in just a couple of years.

I haven't seen it but I'd be willing to bet that the Google TV experience is far superior to what Time Warner and AT&T offer, which is horrible. They've been selling TV service for a long time and still have laggy and unintuitive on-screen menus and guides.
According to the time difference in the before an after shots, it looks like this takes ~4 hours to do?
I work at Google now. What made you decide to leave?
Maybe, compression module is pre-compiled and client is open-source and up on github ;-)
I'm trying to understand Google's thinking here. The first thing I thought was, "If I'm sending mass emails, I already have tracking URLs set up through whatever mass email company I'm using, right? So what's the value to me, the company sending my customers emails?"

But then I read their page [1] and I think I get it. This is how you get your company emails to show up on a Gmail user's Google Now cards. They list a few other reasons but, ultimately, that's it, right?

[1] https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/overview
ThoughtBot did something similar with a Arduino. http://robots.thoughtbot.com/arduino-sensor-network

They had done a podcast episode as well on this although I can't remember which episode that was.
most non-native English speakers don't distinguish between
peek, peak, pick...to them it all sounds the same and gets pronounced similarly...while I have spoken English almost all my life. I generally struggle with such words, which accentuates my accent...so you are not alone:)
Sorry, but that doesn't appear simpler to me...
I haven't played sports games since Ice Hockey and World Cup on NES. IMO the entire sports industry is just a waste of time.
I think this idea that the US has moved to the optimistic indeterminacy quadrant coincides nicely with the rise of the internet and cable news where there is a huge bias towards focusing on perceived bad news, no matter how important any of it actually is. There isn't money to be made in NOT scaring people, so CNN/Fox News/MSNBC/Huffington Post/Politicians/Pretty much anybody trying to make a name for themselves sell fear and fear sells well.

Twenty years ago most things that dominate the 24-hour news channels wouldn't be conversation worthy but now people are addicted to bad news and have come to believe at any given time that things are worse than they've ever been.
This essay has circulated in the Chinese learning community for a long time, and David Moser is both highly respected as well as obnoxiously skilled at Mandarin. As someone who has learnt Chinese to a high degree of proficiency, I agree with many of his points, but it paints a picture that is a bit too grim in my opinion.

The first thing one should note is that Moser started studying Chinese in the late 80s. Things have changed. There is a wealth of accessible, well-written and free learning resources available online. People like Olle Linge have written much about how to study Chinese efficiently. There is a grammar wiki. There is the amazing Pleco dictionary (among others) with built-in OCR, flashcarding, recorded pronunciations. There are podcasts (check out Popup Chinese).

Spaced repitition software has significantly reduced the barrier to literacy; I read my first novel after ~10 months. It was painful, but not impossible thanks to an intensive flashcarding regimen, immersion, and other studying.

Chinese grammar, while not trivial, is much simpler than I found French grammar to be. Also, the "compositive" nature of Chinese characters makes many words easy to remember despite not being cognates. When you have built up an internal library of individual characters, the meaning of a word like 海军 (navy) will be obvious since 海=sea and 军=army.

Also, learning Chinese is incredibly rewarding. It opens up a country with 1.4bn+ inhabitants that is quickly gaining prominence in the world, and with one of the most fascinating scripts ever to be designed. Even though I no longer live in China, I still hear Mandarin all time. This makes learning the language exciting! The hardest part is sticking with it. If you want to learn, it will come so much easier to you.
The same games non programmers play
Show HN: GitHub Team Viewer
AngularJS for Non Single Page Apps – Rooting for rails router
A queue would only work if everyone used this system. Unfortunately, you will always have visitors or people who don't want to participate.
i've been playing with elixir for a little while. i'm still wrapping my head around all its metaprogramming goodness, but so far it's been a fun journey.

also, jose valim must have clones of himself.
Gnomoria, which is like Dwarf Fortress for humans featuring gnomes (http://gnomoria.com)
A critical response by Benny Lewis:

http://www.fluentin3months.com/chinese/
Here is the repo url (https://github.com/vinitkumar/github-team-viewer).
I guess it depends. Are we talking about a flat fee or is there an opportunity for the contractors to bid for my job? The more involved I am in the process, the less I expect to pay. But I might be fine with accepting individuals who have less experience/reviews if they will accept a lower rate. I do think the goal should be to find a specific contractor who will consistently service my yard. Meaning, I don't think I would be a fan of a new person showing up every week. That sort of thing works fine for a taxi service but I think the trust relationship changes because they're coming to my home.