skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As a veteran myself - Infantry, Canada, I thank you for sharing this perspective. I can appreciate how you felt (and still do no doubt) having served myself.

All I can say is that you seem to have lived a fine life so far, but it was you who was able to learn from your experiences, not your experiences educating you.

How does it go? Semper Fi, bud.
Type system hack, not code hack. Certainly the implementation is trivial, yes. Even under the weaker type systems of C++ or Java, having this magical, undeclared value that is also a Circle and a Car and an Account and so on is pretty dirty from the type point of view.

Haskell of course has its own troubles with bottom, and I note some people think we should be doing away with that, too.
Not really. Much of the stuff in stdlib is part of the CL standard. Most of the rest is available as part of most implementations. There is no (as I recal) standard library that every has and can expect to be available.
Did you make more than you would have consulting over the same time period?
Seen it. Doesn't really answer my question either, unless I'm missing something.
Congrats on making it through the first year. Looking forward to Atlas!
As he says below, MILES gear with a blank firing adapter. Basically laser tag 2.0.

Neat trick with MILES gear: If you run out of ammo you can slap the butt of your rifle against something and still "shoot" people...the mid 90's version at least worked on the recoil of the weapon.
8-bit pneumatic processor
A school for changing the world
Not for Common Lisp (CL), but a lot of what's in 'stdlib' for C is already in CL. Also a lot of implementations come with substantial extras, like f.e. sockets, that the article mentioned are not in the CL standard.

Incompatibilities in those extras between implementations are handled by meta-packages (libraries or modules in other programming languages) provided by the community.
If you can show mechanisms/algorithms can produce information (which they mathematically are incapable of doing) or that intelligent agents (such as humans) do not produce information.
Every time someone acts like a troll, we don't need to read through someone's witty retort in response. He's trolling, he knows it, we all know it, and he's downmodded to oblivion for it. That's enough.
The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions…
I don't see information on the SF event. What time is it at, and where is it?
Foursquare: A few thoughts on foursquare's seed financing...
I'm not sure what "cargo cult issues" are, but Cappuccino uses prefixed globals because they are strictly faster than using "namespaces" (which really aren't namespaces).

It makes a big difference in IE.
Given the length of history, they do, in effect, by comparing disks with server-grade interfaces (e.g. SCSI) with desktop-grade interfaces (e.g. IDE).
I think we've witnessed at least one recent presidential election where a large number of people actually liked one of the candidates, and as a result, turnout and share of the vote were both much higher than other recent years. Being the lesser of two evils is only a viable strategy when both sides pursue it.

The reason it seems to work in politics is because it's hard for politicians to be perceived as principled and noble.
Why is Taleb getting all this mainstream attention? The finance guys have been aware of fail tail distributions all along.

As Eugene Fama points out on his website...
http://www.dimensional.com/famafrench/2009/03/qa-confidence-...

"Half of my 1964 Ph.D. thesis is tests of market efficiency, and the other half is a detailed examination of the distribution of stock returns. Mandelbrot is right. The distribution is fat-tailed relative to the normal distribution. In other words, extreme returns occur much more often than would be expected if returns were normal. There was lots of interest in this issue for about ten years. Then academics lost interest. The reason is that most of what we do in terms of portfolio theory and models of risk and expected return works for Mandelbrot's stable distribution class, as well as for the normal distribution (which is in fact a member of the stable class)."
This sounds like a passage from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
No Mars — or Anywhere Else — Without More Money
I don't see the connection to hating what you described less..
A two node Linux HA cluster - mini howto
Why Did Economists Get It So Wrong
If women simply find CS "undesirable" at a ratio much higher than men it would be interesting to try to find out why. To me there doesn't seem to be anything particularly masculine or feminine about CS.
It's Only Rock and Roll Event Prelude
Seriously? I guess you missed the memo over 6 years ago?
Miracle, eh? Try "fiction". Unlimited exponential growth is not even theoretically possible in a three-dimensional universe (goes for tree data structures too, BTW).

The solution is option 2: every once in a while, great fortunes are wiped out by great misfortune (if not by plain incompetence): War, natural disaster, hyperinflation, nations defaulting on their debts. You cannot hedge against everything.
It obviously hasn't been dominant for passenger traffic for quite some time, but, for freight, it's still a major player.

How much of a decline in profitability? How does that compare to other transportation modes?
I dunno about a name, but how about this for a slogan - "You can sign up, but don't ever JOIN."
But if he chooses only the expensive, he'll be a beggar much sooner.
Unlimited exponential growth is not even theoretically
possible in a three-dimensional universe.

He's not referring to infinite growth. Also, "three-dimensional universe" does not preclude unbounded growth, but a finite universe does.
Focusing on "SQL" being a problem is misguided. The amount of SQL knowledge needed to achieve basic CRUD/REST behavior takes about an hour to learn. More advanced SQL takes much longer but most of these new DBs don't allow for queries that complex or would not perform well if you tried.

I'm using mongodb for a new app at the moment. Here are some of the reasons I chose it:

1 - schema-less. I like having postgresql as my backstop for data constraints. It has saved me many times to have a locked down schema that will refuse to corrupt when my app code gets sloppy. That said, during the dev process, its nice at times to avoid thinking through these constraints and getting straight to persisting objects ad-hoc.

2 - fast enough. I have a few features that will creep into the area of "I might need memcached". I'm betting mongodb will be "fast enough" to give me one object repo for my entire app and I can avoid the headaches of writing cache management code.

3 - good enough. Having step 2, fast-enough, means I may have to give up some ACID. I don't need an ACID guarantee for this app. If I did, I would go back to step 2 and rethink writing all that cache management code as I'd stick with postgresql. I do need durability relative to my daily backup. If the tradeoff is 5 or 7 9s (postgres) for a system that is 3 9s (mongodb), and a restore from a dbdump always works, then 3 9s reliability is ok with me. Note: I have no meaningful data on mongodb reliability other than "others are using it for more demanding projects than mine and have good things to say".

4 - more than just simple key/value. I needed to be able to retrieve parts of objects, not just the entire value for a key.

5 - Simplify my app code. Sure, ORMs all well-refined: simple stuff is simple, complex stuff is possible. But it takes a heap of code. With ORM frameworks, I constantly monitor the SQL being output to the log to ensure the framework crafted my SQL properly. Now that I'm using mongodb, my app code's "models" are just thin wrappers around a ruby Hash and simple queries go straight to the mongo ruby drver API. More complex queries get written by me and sit as their only little methods on my model objects. Sure, there is a ruby framework and evolving DSL for mongo, but I want to get away from these added layers.

Notice that the syntax or structure of the db's query language did no crack my requirements list? In fact, mongo has what I would consider some inconsistencies in its query language (if you could even call it a language).

So here are some suggestions for a better name:

* - alt.db

* - SchemaFree

* - less_ACID

* - next-gen object stores

* - hybrid db models
OK how about this for a name - "Data Without Borders"?

or maybe the Lewinsky Club ("I'm going to say this again: we DO NOT have relations.")

http://www.instantrimshot.com
set editing-mode vi

BTW, for those who want to use it occasionally in bash, vi editing mode can be enabled interactively by running

set -o vi

And this command will revert it back to default ("emacs") editing mode:

set -o emacs
Global Wealth Distribution
Interesting that you use the term "validate." What if the results of this poll don't sync with your expectations? Does that mean you change your game plan, drop your idea, or march forward?
I didn't have a good answer, I just thought that was generically applicable, but since you've seen it...
A three-dimensional universe (and, I forgot to mention, the speed of light as an absolute limit) does preclude unbounded exponential growth. Anything physical that grows exponentially would eventually (and faster than you think) have to form a sphere whose radius increases faster than the speed of light. Thus, exponential growth is, in the real world, never more than a comparatively short phase.
Congratulations man! Way to not let rejection knock you down one bit!
I wouldn't have responded, but I thought he raised a semilegitimate argument re:the stylus, and it seemed rude not to respond to the rest.
Most of his articles are great examples of web design that greatly enhance a reader's experience. I think that the importance of good design is often overlooked. I've always admired the design of YC startups, which I believe has made for more enjoyable experiences. After all, design is one of the three things YC mentions.

"How do we choose who to fund? The people in your group are what matter most to us. We look for brains, motivation, and a sense of design. Experience is helpful but not critical."
Given the audience on HN I recommend the very readable "Misbehavior of Markets" by Mandelbrot. Everything worth reading in Taleb's book is a dumbed down rehash of Mandelbrot's ideas.
Then you Google "faster horse," or, more likely, "buggy whip shootout long-distance" or "best feed workhorse carriage"
Some Classrooms Banning Laptops cite grades are hurting.
It's approximately "koap chai". To make it extra enthusiastic, throw a couple of "lai"s on the end.

(mr_luc once learned enough Lao to do basic public speaking in that language, for reasons that the mists of five years ago have now rendered hazy).
What a fantastic announcement. Sadly I live nowhere near any of the planned stops. I'm definitely looking forward to the book though.
I think you have to weigh up the impact. The YC crowd is particularly representative of the target market for this app, so it's definitely going to be very instructive. Fortunately the results have been echoing our assumption, so we're pretty happy. :)
And two Java as well. What the heck do they mean? What is GCC vs GCC #4?
The finance guys may have been aware of it, but their actions were clearly not in line with this knowledge as evidence by the year 2008.

From the article you linked: "None of this implies, however, that the existence of outliers undermines modern portfolio theory or asset pricing theory."

In fact, that's exactly what it does. This is what happens when you build houses on top of sand.
"Take a random sample of any two people from the U.S. population who jointly earn $1 million per annum."

This is where the author loses me. Where is the randomness of the sample, when there are two items which are interdependent?

Later, he criticizes standard deviation as applied to stocks and bonds (decidedly non-random data), finding fault with the bell curve, rather than the misapplication.

Does this chapter make any more sense in the context of the entire book?
It is both slower to write and difficult to read.

Not for me. My cursive hand is much faster than my print hand. In fact, I hate it when I am asked to print, because it slows me down so much. (by a factor of 3 at least.)
That model has the implicit assumption that there has been uninterrupted law, order, conduct of business, and interest-paying accounts for the last five hundred years, which isn't the case.

There's also a more interesting question - what does the notion of "$1 in 1500" even mean?
Should be titled "Before you start learning Common Lisp". Anyone with a reasonable functional programming background would know the difference.
Box.net; Enterprise-ready Document Collaboration for iPhone
A HN classic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=263727

FYI: repeats over a year are fine. Often shorter is ok, but don't push it.
China has some of the world's largest reserves of USD. It seems their bet is on the US government.
The Hierarchy Of Digital Distractions
The Cable News-ification of IT News and Analysis
The Simple, Secret iPhone Tethering Fix
How long is the survey?
Design Globally, Manufacture Locally
The real problem is that Wikipedia is huge. Just the text+history of the English version is like 16GB of XML to download. And that's not counting the media (images,etc) which is somewheres around 200GB+.

I've often thought of creating some sort of offline Wikipedia, but it seems like too complex of a task to undertake in limited free time.

To mitigate the huge-ness that is the full Wikipedia, an app would have to take a somewhat more limited approach. It would have to start off with a Wikipedia snapshot (i.e. what the current page of each article looks like right now) sans media. When a user visited a page, the user would have several options (other than reading the page): [1] Download all media for the page (and store for future offline usage) [2] Update the page to the current version (with a sub-option to do media as well) [3] Download the full history of the page (with sub-option for with/without media). You could obviously get a lot more complicated (i.e. 'set this page for automatic updates at a set interval', 'download the full history, but only download the media for the current revision', 'automatically check for internet connection/update page to current revision upon accessing the article',etc)

I'm surprised that there hasn't been any similar project. Probably due to some of the complexity vs just having a 'latest snapshot of the article text' and leaving it at that. Due to the size of Wikipedia, updating particular articles on a demand basis is probably the way to go. (Keeping past downloaded revisions of the page would be a design decision due to possibly conflicts with a 'download entire history' option)
This interchange is the model of informative civil discourse.
Well, that article is a welcome dose of reality to anyone who (like me) has ever dreamed of being a venture capitalist. A lot of schmoozing, MBA-ing and dues-paying required before you ever really get to the point where you can make fun decisions. And even if you do become a partner in a firm, it's really only the top few firms which are really successful. Ultimately, why bother?
Why I think Apple's Launching a Record Label
9 questions. :)
No Seattle? :(

There's a lot of us folks at Microsoft/Google/Amazon that gr0k xkcd and would love to be there :)
No Brisbane, Australia. Darn.
I've got to say, I can't handle polldaddy. The whole "multi-page wizard" feel is awfully corporate.
We're also doing a [reddit-powered interview with Randall](http://www.reddit.com/comments/9ihy8/ask_randall_munroe_xkcd...) - he'll answer the top 10 questions at the SF event (if you can't make it, we'll be live [on justin.tv](http://justin.tv/reddit).

Geek Reading starts at 7 p.m. at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. Please RSVP to events@eff.org. Admission is $30, and attendees must be 21+.
Get use to it, I know I did :-)
Hadoop is not "for CPU bound problems." It's for huge data. There are much better frameworks for the problem of splitting a parallelizable computation across machines. Nobody would use Hadoop just for that.

Why would Java be the fastest way to do computations with Hadoop? You can use many languages for the map/reduce pieces. The fastest language would be fastest language, not necessarily Java.
I recommend to read the book. Taleb's point is that applying gaussian instruments to mandelbrotian data is not only wrong, it has a peculiar characteristic of being mostly right all the way until it goes horribly, horribly wrong. The time lag is crucial at it allows people to accumulate risks without realizing what they do.
That's because the bottoms all look the same, and not because of something intrinsic in looking at the top vs the bottom of line of words.
This breaking news just in, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

But before he died, he patented dying. So all people who plan to die at some point need to pay up.
That's on the Green Line, isn't it?
are you willing to share the results with the community?
US politicians told: beware geeks bearing gifts
Left handed Jewish scribes (they write with a quill and ink) have a great advantage because they don't move their hand over the fresh ink.

Right handed ones have to hold their hand in the air over the parchment, or use quicker drying ink.

I'm left handed and I remember in school always having a gray color to the bottom of my hand from the pencil graphite.
Brilliant article! This takes it to the next level in discussing institutionalized discrimination. I never knew how hard I actually had it. :)
While we're at it, the name "LISP" is obsolete. It's reminiscent of variants of the broader lisp family of languages, circa 1980. We're talking about Common Lisp instead, often shortened to "Lisp", being a much more modern language."

(Unless the author added that after the OP was submitted)
Big crashes will always occur, but I would not blame the recent crash on the gaussian models. I'd rather say that (almost) everyone underappreciated the risks connected to the real estate prices.

Taleb pushes for a strategy that consists of buying a lot of very safe assets and blending them with bets on "extreme events" (like buying far out-of-the-money put options). Is that a viable long-term strategy? I have my doubts, since there are no evidence suggesting that 'uncertain' strategies have greater returns that more quantified ones.
Don't become too overconfident or you'll end up buying something ridiculous and not even know it.

Heh, I try not to make the same mistake twice!

There must be some website where users post pictures and descriptions of ridiculous things they've bought and the money they've spent. How about calling the website: ThinkTwiceAboutThePrice.com or IOughtNotToBought.com or BuyersRemorse.com. Then with enough membership you can turn it into a swap/auction site. :D
Well that sounds highly non-redundant. Putting your eggs in one basket is never really a good idea. Especially when Rackspace has had some major outages this year.
That's literally across the street from where I work... guess I'll be there.
Somebody's used to reddit's markdown syntax. :)
Agreed. If he came to Seattle, I'd show up/donate/spend money/whatnot.
"Where is the randomness of the sample, when there are two items which are interdependent?"

Given all pairs of people whose join income is $1M, select a pair at random. "All pairs" is an unusual population to select from, but mathematically it's a perfectly valid way to define a random variable.
My recollection of a mathematical finance course I took was that early on we spent about 30 minutes going through the caveats you mention and that were covered in the article, and then they were promptly forgotten or ignored for the entire rest of the semester. I always found that very odd, particularly considering that the course was the start of what was considered (I think) a pretty good MA in Mathematical Finance, with a lot of alumni ending up at well known places on Wall Street: http://www.math.columbia.edu/department/mafn/page5.html
Second for Boston. Big tech city, lots of fans.
On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces
Yes- once we get started. :)
But I can guarantee you that those differences are, like differences associated with skin color, far less than the differences between individuals in the same group.

I always chuckle when people trot that one out. Did you know it's equally true for the differences between dog breeds? Body size varies more within dog breeds than between them. Also intelligence. Somehow that doesn't stop dog breeds from being fairly different from each other. (Actually, somewhat more than human races from the genetic studies I've seen.)

As for the differences between guys and girls being taught not inborn...how many kids do you have? Parents get disabused of that sort of thinking pretty quickly.
Could Apple be trying to buy out Apple Records?

I can't imagine the remaining Beatles letting them use the name Apple for a record label.
First, as the other poster mentioned, it was an interview. Second, when the NYT quotes something that is already written with known errors, the editors are guaranteed to either fix the errors and carefully note that they had to fix the grammar or add a [SIC] because that's the kind of people editors are.
I realise I am the grumpiest survey taker on the planet, but:

1. If you want me to fill this multiple times for multiple projects you had better give me a one page survey.

2. Since I am not using whatever it is you are peddling, I need more context for the questions and/or the ability to tick more than one choice. For example "How often do you release" is a meaningless question without some context. If I release daily to one user group by a pushed installation, weekly to another via offer of rsync and monthly to the rest via traditional builds, which is the answer of interest?

3. You should solicit email addresses seperately, otherwise it comes across like you are as interested in the email addresses as the answers, if not more.

I personally would be more responsive to something that said "we have a tool that does X and Y to help manage releases, do you think that would be useful to you - now tell us about yourself".
A tendency of the modern art of Indonesia
I believe it would be a great source of revenue for them and enable them to run a better encyclopaedia with less hits on their website, especially for frequently accessed sites

How many people are really likely to buy this, though? With wireless internet from your phone from damn near any populated point on the planet becoming more and more widespread, I can't imagine too many circumstances where this would be useful enough to pay money for.
TomTom launches OpenLR open navigation project
My experience has been that journalists take the liberty of fixing "makes you sound stupid" errors like that in most cases -- sometimes they'll double check, but often times they will fix that sort of word choice issue and move on. Indeed, it's the sort of thing that would likely get flagged by a copy editor who wouldn't even know the quote came from an email.