skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would be very interested in having you explain that further, because it makes no sense to me at all.

Capitalism is bad because it lets us grow too quickly? I don't understand. Are you talking about market bubbles? Like that have been going on for four hundred years or more? If so, that's called a feedback loop: the system overgrows and then contracts. When you make a mistake and correct it, there's some adjustment involved. Surely that's better than no adjustment at all, right? I mean, to have everything perfectly valued would only happen in a fantasy world.

Or perhaps I misunderstood.
It's possible they simply gave it back.
Thompson introduced the multiple-state simulation approach in his 1968 paper. In his formulation, the states of the NFA were represented by small machine-code sequences, and the list of possible states was just a sequence of function call instructions. In essence, Thompson compiled the regular expression into clever machine code. Forty years later, computers are much faster and the machine code approach is not as necessary.

Interestingly, if you think in Lisp, it's obvious how much more elegant Thompson's approach is (than a C struct-based state machine), and how you would implement it in Thompson's way with closures.
Surely you must see the Tao in all this?

Reject duality. "Yes" and "No" create each other. They are both to be used, in harmony.

This article is really about honesty.
Eliminating posturing and the little face-saving nothings from "No" half-way empowered the author.
But at the end, he found it was not enough. Now, he must find honesty in "Yes."
Of course this isn't much of a comparison at all :) You're using NodeBox to abstract away much of the pain of event handling and drawing to the screen. A more interesting and fair comparison would be something like using wxPython + pycairo.
Maggie Cheung Cover Vogue China September 2009
Chinese based actress and supergirl Maggie Cheung covers the coverpage of Vogue Magazine China September 2009 edition as she does a pair of stylish photoshoot. The vogue Magazine is available on stands and your edition as your favourites Maggie Cheung covers Vogue China.
Perhaps the network doesn't matter as much as who you are connected with and how much they want to help. Those girls that updated their Facebook status instead of calling local emergency services after being stuck in a storm drain eventually got out because a friend called for them (see http://www.switched.com/2009/09/08/endangered-pre-teens-upda...). I'm sure there's plenty of similar stories out there.
I think it's a c++ library (based on scanning the docs -- I could be wrong), so it's not too surprising to see it outperforming pure Python solutions.
at the same time, yahoo's design influenced google. google used to have an exclamation point in its logo, just like yahoo.
JQuery for Beginners: Selectors, Hierarchies and Attributes, Oh My
Although your comment looks like a vacuous redditesque one-liner, I'll respond: I've jumped from similar heights under similar circumstances, i.e. a spot favored by locals, surrounded by people happily jumping and swimming. It's only in hindsight that what she did was an obviously bad move, and even then it sounds like a slightly different angle would have made it harmless.

This aspect is hardly "the ultimate lesson of all this": if the post were merely about someone who jumped into a pond when they shouldn't have, no one would be discussing it.
But "they" could include 2 engines in languages that have different versions for compiled and adhoc RE (like python)... Let's say it could work like this:

If you use adhoc, you always get the huge version (it probably doesn't matter anyways - it's going to be used once). If you compile, simple version would start constructing the pattern matching graph - as soon as anything not-supported is found, you go back to the big RE. One time cost should not be big if you're already prepared to match many strings (you're using crazy features and compiling that RE explicitely after all - that's going to take long). Optionally a flag could force a specific engine.
It's not capitalism that failed - it's the government's regulatory interference!

The Federal Reserve, by setting a single interest rate for the entire economy, destroys local market signals. (What you want is a locally adjusted rates to reflect natural cycles in decoupled local economies - this is what happens if you don't regulate centrally.)

The government's monopoly on the issuance of currency is important, too. And what about the SEC that went after innocent people like Martha Stewart and ImClone founder Sam Waksal, while blind to actual crooks such as Bernard Madoff? What about the federally-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? They were to a large extent responsible for the housing crisis. They have so much of the market, and it's government regulation and backing that gave it to them.

On a national scale, private business, if devoid of these corrupting government influences, would not fail all at once, nor would it fail with such lasting severity as we've seen in the last century. It's notable that all of the regulatory bodies (and a great many more that I did not mention) were created in the last 100 years to "stabilize" the market - but it doesn't take great genius to see that all they have accomplished is to take little local pockets of boom/bust (which add up to overall growth and stability on a national scale), and pack them into huge booms and busts that cause much longer and deeper cycles that you can't escape from as easily by moving to a new city.

And don't forget that this sort of centralization is important for marshaling resources necessary to run an expansionist empire (think about the economic policies in America during the two world wars, and the American empire that resulted).

To help differentiate between the "capitalism" the article smears (what should be called a mixed economy - some capitalism, some regulation), and actual capitalism, see http://www.capitalism.org/.
I believe markets are tools, not rules.

This is one of those times when my background in economics threatens to overwhelm me with analysis paralysis while writing a comment. Just to be concise about it: economics is a descriptive science, but we conflate it with a prescriptive one. Sometimes, that is definitely warranted--as a society, markets are a way to get things done, and we need to understand them as much as we can in order to implement them. But the hubris that comes with thinking that we basically get it, that we comprehend these ridiculously complex chaotic dynamical systems, leads to mis-allocated resources and anti-humanist policies.
That's the fad right now - but I doubt that this is much more than tweaking.
Aneurysms are made possible through a weakness in the blood vessel. Meteoric growth in a capitalist economy, as the post I was originally responding to mentions, is the result of a weakness in human psychology -- greed.

I do not believe judging a phenomenon as a success due to an effect of a weakness is rationally sound.

I would say capitalism is not as good an economic system as one that enables steady, predictable co-existence of human society and synergy with the earth above meteoric, unsustainable growth, which on the downside causes pain, suffering, misery, death and perhaps the decimation of spaceship earth.
Yes, opportunity cost is super-important and is probably under-appreciated. In the startup example, you should definitely be considering the worst case (and best case!) opportunity cost since working on one startup (or other job) largely precludes you from working on something else.
When there are useful defaults, or usefully filtered and arranged options that we can override if we like, we see the software as smart. When the software thinks it knows better than we do, then it's not really "helping."
While I am not an expert in the oil industry, I found the above comments quite fascinating; they're spurring me to do a bit of my own research, in fact. I don't know who is right, but I just have to ask: "You obviously have absolutely no clue about what you are talking about." Would you say that to someone in person, too? The Internet is a good place to keep as much civility as possible, since there's so little of it to go around.
Sure. Pick some stasis period before modern capitalism. No central heating. Periodic starvation. No health care. Very low literacy. No universal education. Forty percent murder rate for males. Slavery. No Internet!! I sure want to be there.
Ask HN: Podcasts?
What podcasts are you subscribed to, if any?
As the article mentions, usually PCREs are just 'fast enough.' Not that an anecdote is better than actual data, but I prefer to use regular expressions wherever possible, and I've never had matching time be an issue. It's not as if people are clamoring for better matching times. Supporting two different matching engines so that a fairly trivial speed increase can be had seems silly.
Energy saving light bulbs offer dim future
this is why capitalism has failed. It has enabled the propagation of negative human traits. Traits we all agree are detrimental to our survival. Greed is not good. We all know it. It promotes overconsumption and hoarding of resources.

We need a system that propagates benevolence and vision.
You can't feed 6 billon people on organic farming.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/132479.html
Learning economics from random articles in the mainstream press is like learning software development from reading Wired. There are many schools of thought in the world of economics, and they often disagree as to the causes of booms and busts (greedy capitalism, regulatory structures, the monetary system, etc). (Correct) economics attempts to describe what has happened in the past, it has very little to actually say about what you should do. If it did, all of the economists of the world would be filthy rich (they aren't).
iam louay razouq
Ear damage by MP3, DVD and digital television?
correlation does not imply causation. There's no reason to believe these advancements were the result of capitalism. Your tone indicates as much.

What about the stone age, bronze age, iron age... gun powder, the wheel... Fire!

These inventions may have had a much greater impact on human well-being than anything you mentioned and all were way before the promotion of capitalism.
Indeed. http://github.com/eventmachine/eventmachine/raw/b4765960db91...

EventMachine consists of an extension library written in C++ (which can be
accessed from languages other than Ruby)

So the post compares pure Python web frameworks with a C++ library. And not even a good library based on Boost/Asio or libevent.
It's called aquatic hypoxia: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2008/08/the-growing-prob...
since alex mentioned almost.at, i'm going to go with qooxdoo - which (codewise) is a whole lot more direct.

http://qooxdoo.org/about

Still waiting on Atlas to appear though.
Though, to be precise, helium is not as common on Earth as it is in the universe at large, because our gravity isn't strong enough to keep it around in our atmosphere for very long.

But it is made in big quantities by radioactive decay of elements inside the Earth. Whereupon most of it diffuses outward and escapes into space -- helium is a tiny, inert molecule which diffuses relatively easily even through many "solid" rocks. The only place it tends to pile up on the earth is inside relatively impermeable underground rock formations: The same ones that trap natural gas, and that often trap oil as well. That's the reason why helium and natural gas tend to be found together.

All of which is easily read at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium
Norman Borlaug on Organic Farming
Discussion I saw said it's two computers: one for public internet one for the high-security gov network (with no physical connection). Apparently that's the norm for very-high-security government setups.
How (not) to attract the best
>> Maybe I'm being overly critical.

You are.
Billions Served: Norman Borlaug interview (2000)
So I'm a little confused. You cite that the EIA reports 5.22 million BOE per day, an increase from 1991. I'm looking at this page:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mcrfpus2a.htm

I might be reading it wrong, but it seems to indicate that in 1991 7.4 million BOE were produced and in 2008 4,9 million BOE.

Is there perhaps a different source on that site that you can refer us to? Or are you factually incorrect?
Three other people were injured that day from jumping, and the ambulance that was called wasn't even called for the heroine of our story. I don't know what the denominator is, but it doesn't sound good.

I do agree though, that jumping or not wasn't the main issue here.
I get what you're saying, but twisted does all that stuff with a great deal of testing.

It's the same reason smart companies are compelled to contribute changes to open source projects. That's a lot of maintenance you get for free.

That's why friendfeed didn't do their own python implementation on top of their own posix operating system to make sure they had a firm grasp on all the parts. A working and well-tested component is almost always better than writing a new one from scratch that you have to deal with yourself.
Heads up Apple, the Intel Netbook is unstoppable
Is eventmachine's c++ lib really not a "good library"? If not, why?
But it's not a trivial speed increase -- for some cases PCREs are O(2^n) where Thomson's NFA is at worst O(n^2). The Thomson NFA quickly gets to be millions of times faster

Thomson's algorithm would let you could use regular expressions for cases where you would otherwise have never tried.
See here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/steo
In fairness, the article says he's not against capitalism he just believes in regulated capitalism

In fact, though I'll be the first to admit I'm not familiar with Minsky's work, the article makes it sound like his theories are basically what we've been doing for the last 2 years (Prop up failing industries, use the government as an employer of last resort, etc...) I have two issues with this:

1. We've been doing just that for 2 years and the end result thus far is we're still in a recession and our government is dramatically poorer. When the government has to hold up "slowing job loss" as an accomplishment that doesn't impress me (It's also what FDR tried for 10 years to no avail)

2. In large part pumping money into failing institutions is what got us here. Let me cut through the economics babble and just put this in logical terms. Capitalism works because the best businesses succeed while the worst fail. If you prop up the worst so they can't fail you get a situation where they'll take crazy risks because there's no fear of failure. Hence where we are now.
Radio Lab!!!
Developers deserve more equity in startups
The most informative series I have read on the abiotic origins of oil and gas: http://www.google.com/search?q=abiotic+oil+site%3Adavesweb.c...
Here's something that bothers me.

The super strains of wheat came from crossing a wide variety of diverse wheat species, just one example the sturdy stalk came from a Japanese dwarf variety.

But now the further refinement of the vast majority of these original varieties has stopped. If they still exists, it's only as a curiosity or as stored seed in vaults.

The new super strains, were bred by moving them up and down the globe to get more harvests each year. This made them able to grow almost anywhere. That's fantastic. But why did we stop there? Why not keep going and now refine them to the location?

Near the equator days are the same length year round and it's hot and humid. Near the poles in summer you can have almost continuous light. If we have one variety that can give high yields in both extremes, imagine how yield could be increased if we refined that variety and adapted it to the extremes?

Why isn't there a massive international effort constantly developing new better, higher yielding and more disease resistant verities?

It would be difficult to make private investment in this profitable. It takes a lot of time, a good bit of effort, and improvements are incremental. It's difficult to make that profitable, especially when you can invest in fertilizer instead.
Meteoric growth in a capitalist economy is just as much about need as it is greed. The beauty of capitalism and markets is that they only provide signals and incentives - reacting to those incentives which are a direct reflection of immediate need/want can come as a result of altruism or greed but in the end, the result is implicit cooperation.

Besides, the one driver of commerce and every little transaction isn't and can't be greed anyway - it's trust. It is silly to blame this recent bubble on capitalism and markets when it was just as much driven if not started by state actors. As for the rest - "unsustainable growth, which on the downside causes pain, suffering, misery, death and perhaps the decimation of spaceship earth" - bullocks.

Capitalism and markets have resulted in less pain, suffering, misery, and death than any of the alternatives. Indeed it has been a central driver in alleviating many of these problems by ensuring need is reflected in the incentives. Growth in the longer run means innovation and that more needs are being met and more suffering is being averted - and that, at least to me, is a good thing.
Unscientific nonsense. Audio compression doesn't work the way he assumes, and neither does the human ear.
Absolutely. I see people basically chatting in comments on status updates. I think the problem would be more about spreading the story quickly. Twitter doesn't have the "friend" requirement, ultimately making it the better tool(?) here.
Also, "U.S. crude output on the rise": http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/energy/6598330....
Thanks for that link. Interesting on the how ebay and myspace use cookie size with great abandon (v. Amazon & Google, for ex.). Leaves me wondering whether they know what it's costing them. And if so - whether they are realizing significant savings with other performance figures.
Also: http://www.petroleumworld.com/story09090312.htm

Excerpt:

<snip>
U.S. oil output is benefiting from the addition of major deep-water fields, including BP's Thunder Horse, that are helping offset production declines onshore and in shallower Gulf waters. In many cases, these deep-water fields were discovered years ago but are only now coming on line, given the massive costs and technical challenges associated with them.

The combination of favorable factors should lift U.S. crude oil production to an average of 5.22 million barrels per day in 2009, up from 4.95 million barrels per day last year and the first annual increase since 1991, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
</snip>
But it is also a high risk, high yield strategy. The high yield is great, the high risk not so much. It is heavily reliant on very few, very closely related varieties and pesticides. That's just a ticking clock until a fungus or something like it, attack these strains and the lack of genetic diversity leads to mass starvation.

There's also the very long term damage from chemical fertilizer, things like hard-pan.
Try this graph:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/gifs/Fig12.gif
I liked Borlaug and agree with most of his ideas -- but find the way glibertarians like Pen Gillette have abused his name as a rhetorical playing card quite distasteful.
But greed, when coupled with reason, is good! What is in your rational long-term self-interest is what is good for you. To want that, to be greedy for it - to desire it above all else - is what you should always strive to do.

Please, pick apart the phrase "rational long-term self-interest" - and note that "long-term" means on the timescale of your lifetime.

I disagree with your implicit Malthusian assumption that resources can be overconsumed/hoarded in a meaningful way. The universe is chock-full of atoms and energy, and the key to unlocking more is always just a little more technology (which we have a pretty good track record at doing!)
You mean to say there would be unintended consequences to the Fed dropping interest rates after 9/11 to below market rates and cranking up the printing press? No...
United States of Zhmerinca (2005)
That's not a mistake!
"The mystery of the Declaration of Independence."
I guess until the day we can drill oil/gas from Mars or Venus. Then we will know theory for the biogenic petroleum oil is not correct.
These folks' Nature Geoscience paper appears [1] to say nothing more than that, if you take methane and squeeze it a lot under high temperature and pressure, some of it becomes ethane, propane, and butane:

Here we use in situ Raman spectroscopy in laser-heated diamond anvil cells to monitor the chemical reactivity of methane and ethane under upper-mantle conditions. We show that when methane is exposed to pressures higher than 2 GPa, and to temperatures in the range of 1,000–1,500 K, it partially reacts to form saturated hydrocarbons containing 2–4 carbons (ethane, propane and butane) and molecular hydrogen and graphite.

Although, of course, when you continue to squeeze the ethane, propane, and butane some of it turns back into methane:

Conversely, exposure of ethane to similar conditions results in the production of methane, suggesting that the synthesis of saturated hydrocarbons is reversible.

That's equilibrium for you.

It's hard to believe that any of this is really news to organic chemists, but maybe it is. Or maybe this paper got reviewed by the scientists' best friends. Whatever. I'm neither a geologist nor an organic chemist.

In any case, I really admire the phrasing of the final sentence of the abstract:

Our results support the suggestion that hydrocarbons heavier than methane can be produced by abiogenic processes in the upper mantle.

Very judiciously stated. But this is like saying that the fact that engineers can make diamonds in the laboratory "supports the suggestion" that many of the diamonds under South Africa could have been made in ancient underground laboratories. Yes, A is a necessary condition for B, but the fact that A is true doesn't really say much about the extent to which B is true.

Better evidence, please. Preferably in a journal I can actually read.

---

[1] I can't read it, of course, without paying $18. Because why should the public be allowed to read the results of the research that we pay for? For-profit journals delenda est.
Game developers already do that - there's an xbox series that's a Grand Theft Auto Clone, and 1000 Bejeweled and Tetris-alikes.
The remedy isn't about saying no, the remedy is sunlight and transparency. There should be consequences to overbilling, unnecessary treatments. There are after all a great deal of medical treatments and tests that are necessary and should be done but because of third party payers, it creates perverse incentives and discourages competition and accountability which is what we really need.
Mike's amazing at 'Marketing 2.0'. Smart dude working in what could have been a dull space that he and the freshbooks crew manage to make interesting.
No accreditation means no funding, means no hospital, means no job. So by your definition, the only way doctors can remain doctors at said hospital is by being evil. Hence, I would blame the short-sighedness of whoever created and approved for the rules of accreditation for hospitals, not the people at the whims of those rules.
Howto : Install openoffice3.1.1 on ubuntu9.04|LinuxMint Gloria
However, no matter how you try, capacity to absorb CO2 is finite.
Your point is fair, but I think you may be dramatically overestimating the amount of time that was spent writing and debugging Tornado. Overall, I'd estimate that less than 1% of our time was spent on Tornado and other similar "reinventions", and that in exchange we got simple systems that we understand and that work the way we like, which seems like a pretty good deal to me.