skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The server was temporarily having issues, it should all be fixed now!
You say our motivation is "to force users to pay or share advertising data or some such bullshit". Actually, we don't charge users anything, and we don't run ads or sell user data or anything like that. We only try to get users to sign up because they have a better experience when they do and in the long term they write more answers and more knowledge gets shared that way.

You may not want to sign up yourself, or you may disagree with this tradeoff on principle, which is fine, but I want people to understand the motivation. We just want to increase the total amount of knowledge shared. In the short term requiring signups means some people don’t join. But a lot of people do join and start to use Quora regularly, a lot more than if there was no requirement, and those people end up contributing so many more answers that we judge this to be the right decision for the long term.

In fact, at this point, most of the answers written every day would not exist if we had not had the signup requirement. I realize that this choice makes the product worse for people who refuse to join. But in the counterfactual world Quora is a product with much less coverage of any topic, and that is a much lower quality experience for users. We are trading off a little annoyance at first for a much better experience and the ability to access a vastly larger base of content in the long term.
1. Public transport will still be cheaper, so it will still have its place. And I think we'll see small charging spaces that autonomous vehicles can use every block or so. Plus parking for these vehicles will be dense and save loads of space - it is obscene how much of our space is dedicated to parking.

I think we'll also see something in between a typical commuting vehicle and a bus. If 10 people in a specific area have regular bookings to go from a two block area to the CBD in a fixed time, then a van will do pick-ups and drop-offs either from houses or from fixed corners (think unmarked bus stops). It will be like demand-based bus routes.

I think we might also eventually see pod-based vans for people that don't want to socialise in any way with others in the vehicle. That said, people cope with the subway OK.

I don't think pollution from driving will be a significant factor with a serious influx in electric vehicles.

2. That's worse than what's happening now. I think we'll see peak pricing motivate changes in schedules and a decrease in the full complement of cars. I also think we'll see companies selling time-share in vehicles so you might buy one of these cars to have priority access, but then earn money from whenever it's available to work for you as part of a network. Those that want to keep one dedicated to themselves could.

3. Staff costs are significant in Australia so here and in similar places, I think taxis will be increasingly popular. Already it's not far off the case that commuting via taxi outside peak times could be more affordable for me with a second car I use twice a day, twice a week. Four taxi trips would cost me $12-17 each ($2500-3500/year). My second car, ignoring the cost to buy it would reach $2500 annually from registration, insurance and maintenance. That ignores depreciation, cleaning, hassle of parking, walking to my parking spot in the rain four blocks away, etc. Take away salary costs of taxis and make them easy to hail and pay by phone and I'd switch so quickly. And I think many people would prefer to travel by autonomous vehicle than with a driver who smells, listens to crappy radio stations or answers their phone the entire trip.
Amazon Vs. Book Publishers, By The Numbers
To the best of my knowledge (I'd love a pointer to details if I'm wrong), the reason Kindle has DRM at all is entirely due to publisher demands for it.
Many regular people are comfortable with Paypal, specifically using it instead of giving out their credit cards (almost half, in my experience). Can't say I blame the motivation, given that I've had to report fraud 4 times on my 3 credit cards in the last 6 months. Knock on wood, Paypal has gotten better, anecdotally.
That, I think is the key question and no data is given. IMHO, I really doubt Uber has expanded the market, but instead taken a share of it, so 'creating' 20,000 jobs is at the expense of X thousand others.
I think people forget about this point, especially tyres. They take a ton of effort to make and you cant really resuse them for much afterwords.
There is a clear one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom of every single email we send, and there always has been. It says: "To disable all email from Quora, visit the following link: Unsubscribe."
The Uber driver pays for his car's maintenance and fuel.
Fair play to Microsoft. Thats some impressive tech.
No but it forces a seller who wants to use DRM to sell to you through Amazon
This is why I buy books from Barnes and Noble: it's so damned easy to strip the DRM.
I would give it up to their data science and machine learning team. They turned an idea into an executional reality and optimized it like no other.

I just heard Kevin Novak (@novakkm) speak @ Geekdom SF and he shared the approach he took along their journey.
Re. naming things, In the original BASIC, variable names were also quite limited. A-Z, A[0-9]-Z[0-9], which is actually an even more limited space than most spreadsheets which allow for something like [A-Z]{1,4},[0-9]{1,4} at least.

You could also argue that spreadsheets are kind of homoiconic, since code and data occupy the same structure. But that's a bit of a stretch.
The reached tipping point they mention is that the current objects will collide often enough to continually produce even more debris. That means that the generation of the new objects happens certainly much faster than the burning in the atmosphere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

http://webpages.charter.net/dkessler/files/KesSym.html

"today, the catalogue contains about 13,000 objects, or more than 3 times as many objects. This gives a collision rate that is more than 10 times what it was just over 30 years ago, or 0.13 per year….which is the same as one catastrophic collision between cataloged objects every 8 years….with the time between collisions rapidly becoming shorter as the catalog continues to grow. The larger fragments from either explosions or collisions will further accelerate the rate of collisions."
> Setting up an independent ebook sales portal isn't as hard as writing a new operating system

I'm sure some PC vendors like HP could probably have figured out how to put together an OS -- because many of them did. effectively marketing a consumer OS in the market Microsfot had dominated, and where all the app development was focussed on windows, OTOH...
You can price the car based on the time of the ride, to spread out rush hour and reuse vehicles for multiple trips. It will always be more efficient than privately owned vehicles due to the ability to choose the appropriate vehicle for the ride, instead of having to buy a vehicle for the most intensive purpose and underutilizing it a majority of the time.
The took the photos but Francis Crick used LSD to help him imagine what the shadow was they were looking at.
I browsed through Common Lisp GitHub repos, but it didn't really answer my question. Are there any known, much used applications, frameworks, libraries, whatsoever? Something to see the structure of big projects? Something that possibly shows there are also bigger companies interested into LISP?
As someone who has actually used the SR&ED program for many years, I have to say that you've got it a bit wrong...

SR&ED will cover a percentage of capital expenditures essential to the work and a percentage of $ paid to contractors so it's salary plus SOME eligible expenses. Salaries make up the biggest part though. I got about 65% back, using the proxy method - a simpler way of calculating SR&ED overhead on eligible salary expenses.

The R&D effort does not have to advance "the world's" state of technology, just your company's.

It can't be obvious or routine engineering BUT work that is required to complete the R&D work (but not directly R&D) IS eligible and you can claim it.

The 3 core requirements of SR&ED eligibility (for software anyway) are (1) there has to be technical uncertainty, (2) you must use a systematic approach and keep records a notes and (3) you must achieve a technological advancement.

The 3rd item catches people because it doesn't require a successful outcome. You can fail and still claim the project. If you knew in advance (or it was obvious to anyone in the field) that it would fail (or succeed) then there was no uncertainty and it would not qualify.

SR&ED is really not that difficult to navigate. Consultants can help, but they'll take a big chunk of your claim. Most of them work for a percentage that runs anywhere from 15% to 35%. That's big money for very little value. I wrote my own claims for many years and they were all successful.

When I started there was no limit on the write ups, now they put some severe character count limits on the writes ups. That makes them harder for us but less confusing for the reviewers. You really have to be able to distill things down to just the essentials.

Any Canadian software company that doesn't at least look at SR&ED is just throwing money out the window.
Also, ignores that Fourier optics only holds for the paraxial approximation (i.e. the small angle approximation). I'd put the rule of thumb somewhere around a numerical aperture of 0.3 [0] -- beyond that, polarization effects start to come into play, and beyond 0.5-0.6, it becomes an issue in, for example, microscopy.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_aperture -- Similar to f-number from photography, and describes how big the aperture of the lens is in relation to its focal length. Specifically, it's the sine of the angle from the optical axis to the ray extending from the focal point to the edge of the lens, for a single lens system.
I'm not sure the situation is that simple. You bought the book through Amazon, but (in this case), you bought the book from the other poster. Putting them closer to, say, a shopping mall. As a shopper, who's has a stronger relationship to you—the store you bought something from, or the mall you bought it in?

I cannot see how a mall is analogous. In the mall, you choose the stores you go to and then look for the product there. You are explicitly entering different stores, and you have the obvious ability to return to that store. That builds affinity with the store.

With Amazon, the typical entry point is to search for the product you want. You don't particularly care who is selling it so long as the price, delivery, and trustworthiness are there. Maybe if all other things are equal, I'll choose a vendor that I bought from before. But, to be honest, for most purchases, I've only ever thought of it as being fulfilled by Amazon or someone else.

Anecdotally, I literally can't recall the names of any vendors I've bought from in Amazon. But I do know the places I like in the mall.
The problem I see is that Hack runs on HHVM rather than the standard PHP runtime, which is ubiquitous (some would argue that's its primary or only virtue).

So Facebook or any other company running code on their own server can shift to HHVM with (relative) ease but open source projects (like WordPress) and libraries can only switch once everyone else switches, Which leaves us in a catch-22, so Hack remains forever in a symbiotic/parasitic relationship with PHP.
That's a widespread fear among Uber detractors, as seen in action outside of US in the past few weeks.

I think without a third-party assessment of reliable data on the market every opinion on the subject is based on FUD. Unfortunately, at this time we seem to be missing both reliable data and an "objective" assessment.
I agree. That is sad. Hence why I ask for more data. I suspect it's not really painting the whole picture.
It is easy to explain no manual control. Google will include insurance cost into the service itself. If there is any accident, Google's insurance plan will cover it. If there is manual control, the insurance cost will be a mess, since you have to factor in the driving record of the person who is in the car. This alone would be a show stopper.
That is basically the default of git push
You are the very first person I have run into in any forum to say that moving from SVN to Git had a smooth conceptual migration (at least among people who have ever done anything more complicated than "git commit -a" which I assume you have if you've been using git for a number of years).

It is hard to come up with two systems that implement source control and are more different.
Google is slow or even unaccessible in China
"Who thought you could have fun with the Germans?" Really, Kara?

Anyway, obviously there were a couple of mistakes by the speech recognition, and they were taking care to speak very clearly, but still, I'm impressed. The future looks bright.
Don't social scientists and economists spend a huge amount of time learning statistical software such as SPSS or Stata or Gauss? Why bother with Excel?
These sort of low speed manoeuvers are in my opinion quite awkward with traditional control and viewing systems, which is presumably why there has been so much development of parking sensors and cameras, and now automatic parking. I think many people would prefer being able to set where they want the car to go on a top down schematic/plan and let the automated control systems wrangle the car into place.
Indeed. I wonder if they'll also want to call it Babel Fish? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Babel_Fish just confused me more, and I've now no idea who actually owns the trademark rights to that term. (It was AltaVista, bought by Yahoo!, spun-off into Bing Translate, which was partially bought by Microsoft, and ... I'm lost... )
The copy/paste issue on iOS is a bug, and should be fixed within the next week. Sorry about that. We want people to copy and share content out of Quora far and wide, which is why our terms of service gives people an unusual amount of legal permission to copy and reuse content. See: http://www.quora.com/about/tos
If you have twisted installed (which is the case on stock OSX), you can use the twisted webserver, which is a lot faster than SimpleHTTPServer and supports concurrent multiple downloads & resumes. I use this alias:

alias twisted_web='twistd -n web --path $PWD'
Back in April, at a hackathon sponsored in part by Microsoft, me and my friends built something we called Unilingo which was a working model of this idea! At the time we wondered why no other video chat applications did anything like this, but now it seems Microsoft stepped up to the plate and added translation to Skype!
$90K in (gross) revenue (in NYC), before taking into account operating costs (fuel, lease expenses), depreciation, healthcare, self-employment taxes, etc.

It's off the cuff and I'm sure I'm missing a number of categories, while realizing that you can deduct a certain number as business expenses, but I'm fairly certain you're really (edit) not (/edit) seeing anything close to $90K in the end.
But many people prefer to buy from Amazon precisely because it shields them from the less pleasant business practices of other businesses.

The issue here is not who has the right to the data, it is customer satisfaction.
Not on github, but, IIRC, Catia is written mostly in Lisp.
The video shows a rotating camera at the top of the car that's scanning for objects (I guess). What's the advantage of a mechanical rotary movement over an array of cameras that give a continuous 360 degree view (e.g. the street view cars)?

Update :
Found a link : http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402516,00.asp
In an interview last week, Stuart Woods, the executive vice president of Velodyne, which manufactures the LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) rotating module that sits atop Google's autonomous vehicles, said that his company has started developing prototype security systems that could be trialed within the next year. The Velodyne LIDAR HDL-64E and HDL-32E modules use an array of either 64 or 32 lasers to electronically "see" the environment, Woods said. On Google's car, the module is set inside a rotating drum. Its lasers complement Google's own mapping software and GPS data, which help orient the car on the road. The LIDAR provides additional positional data, but also identifies other cars, bicycles, pedestrians, and road hazards.
This Week in Rust (Week 50)
Are you going? I just wonder if it might be possible to send a delegate :-) I can not make it in person, but perhaps somebody could take my submission?

Not that I have anything ready yet, so I probably wouldn't come up with a great warrior in the short time. But it seems a shame to miss it.
Anecdotally I take way way more Lyft's and Uber's now than I did taxi's 3 years ago with very little change in my expendable income. FYI, im in LA.
Slightly tangential, but I feel like a few people on HN would appreciate this Vienna Teng song, named for the company that wrote the document you posted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mvrKfcOnDg&feature=kp
If you are an owner in the company you only can claim a maximum of 75% of your salary. So if 100% of your time was eligible work and you made $100K you could only claim $75K of that and you'd get a percentage of that $75K back, not the whole thing.
If I'm not mistaken, the "camera" at the top sends a very thin, concentrated vertical beam to detect objects. To implement it in the way you described, you'd need quite a few cameras (100+) to get the same precision.
I have one of those 3dfx shirts from 1998. Some employees were handing them out at a Quake tournament I participated in. Good times.
Somewhat off topic, but how do single page apps deal with people hacking the JS? For example, if as a particular user I am only allowed to perform certain functions within the app, and that functionality is contained in the JS, then it doesn't seem like it would be very hard to modify the JS to enable the functionality I shoudn't be allowed to use.
I think the useful stuff +is+ gross. Bacteria is stinky!
Artifactory- the first private npm registry and proxy for  Node.js framework.
The same way you tell it drive anywhere else without controls.
And the financing costs for the car to begin with, and in addition doesn't receive the health and fringe benefits of salaried employment.
My mother was a senior accountant at one of the Big Four accounting firms, and spent so much time Excel that she once built a Gantt chart in it.
43% of Americans are now covered by Uber. Seems like they've hit most of the densely populated areas. I'm sure it will take much longer than that to hit the less populated areas, if ever. For most cities (read: not large and dense), Uber will probably not work.
> Rumor has it that the next release of SBCL will support calling SBCL from Java on Android.

I would have thought that ABCL (Armed Bear CL) would be a more suitable candidate for porting to Android. It's already written in Java.
'Sally' (Asimov's 1953 short story about robot cars)
Egg-white shortage in the US after a rise in demand for yolk-free omelettes
Reminds me of this from a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu-nlQqFCKg

I feel like they should merge the two. The subtitles are a nice touch, but if it could capture the voice of the speaker it would be truly magical.
I doubt the automotive pun was intended, but if it was, it's in poor taste, and if it wasn't, it's a nasty oversight - considering the last time people read a headline about an "Uber impact," it was because a little girl was killed. It's extremely important to consider such things in this kind of language.
"The fact that they use spreadsheets suggests that they spend very little time worrying about accuracy." I don't get it. Why does the fact that a person uses a particular piece of software suggest that they don't care about accuracy? Does this mean that just because I use R or Python I worry more about accuracy? Really? I think it has more to do with loss of control - real developers hate Excel because it gives business people something they can work with straight away. Every time there's a bug which could remotely be related to spreadsheets, people start another wave of Excel-hate. As if this was entirely impossible in a real programming language. Don't get me wrong, spreadsheets are not perfect by any means. But neither is anything else in this world. It purely comes down to choosing the most suited tool for a given problem. And in Piketty's case there's nothing wrong with choosing Excel.
20k jobs created? Is hired car use really going up that much? If I had to guess, I'd say a handful of new jobs are created while the rest are just taken from existing taxi companies.

Not that I think there's anything wrong with that. I just think the stat is pretty misleading.
They had to add a checkbox to http://nginx.com/products/feature-matrix/
My guess is yes. Uber makes it so easy to quickly and painlessly get a ride that I find myself using the service much more often than I would a normal Taxi in the past. From casual observation I find this to be true for the majority of my friends and even family members as well.

Normal Taxi services are a pain in the ass to book, not connected to my credit card (so you have to go through the whole guilt trip for not having cash, takes longer, etc), and for whatever reason I always had bad experiences with them at least half the time. None of these things are issues with Uber, leading to much more usage on my part. It's just so damn easy, and even satisfying, to tap a few times and have a car magically show up.
I'm not an editor, but note that standards for capitalizing titles vary quite a bit.

I've seen blatant errors (no leading capital, uncapitalized proper names) corrected here, but other variances left in place, matching the source/submitter/editor's varying practices.
Usually the functionality of the app exists in the backend, which would be server side. No matter what you do on the frontend, there should be no way for you to trigger actions in the backend you were not authorized to perform.
Kudos to Microsoft Research. It is very impressive especially given that it was an actual long distance live demo. Although that funny Blooper from Vista's speech recognition [1] will always remain stuck in my mind.

I am guessing this is going to be the part of our future where language barrier slowly becomes the thing of the past.
The most intriguing part of this demo was where Satya says that Machine learning technology gets better at previous languages as new languages are introduced. That in itself is an accidental revolution.

[1] http://youtu.be/kX8oYoYy2Gc?t=43s
Why is logging to syslog as opposed to a separate file an important use case? Genuinely curious.