skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
s/natural/statistically correlated/

There are a number of countries getting wealthier which don't have falling birth rates. Most are oil exporting.

Tom "Do the Math" Murphy discusses this: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2013/09/the-real-populat...

Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain, especially.
A couple of points:

1) The guy lists his activities with heavy focus on Rosetta Stone. To me that pretty much invalidates his claims on the spot. RS is not really well respected in language learning circles (at least a couple of years ago, it was not). Pimsleur is better due to its exponential backoff repetition model and it's "how do you say" prompts.

2) I did not see any mention of activities that actually built vocabulary. Not in a "listen to a show" way, but in a "read a book and translate every word you don't understand". I learned English that way. As a Russian, I studied it in school and in private courses to no effect. When I came to Australia, I decided to re-read Tolkien's "The Hobbit" but this time in the original rather than Russian translation. Of course, I did not realize that Tolkien was philologist... So, I may have learnt a bit more of vocabulary and grammar than I really needed for street English.

3) When you learn your first foreign language, you are learning two things at once: language-learning practices and specifics of specific language (vocabulary, grammar, sounds). That's why Esperanto as the first foreign language is great. (http://www.springboard2languages.org/) You learn the practices (in a very supporting community http://lernu.net/) with a very regular language. Then, you can attack a more complex language like French.

4) As an aside, last couple of years, language learning startups were quite popular. Unfortunately, they all try to address global market and don't dive deep enough into any single language. Therefore most of the interesting & academic research that could have really impacted language learning process goes unused. I have about 10 pages of (technical) notes on what _I_ would want from a language-learning website and I have seen less than 10% of it out in the wild.
Breach Browser Creator on NodeUp Podcast
I never noticed the Close button before, so I tried it w/o the ?share=1 in another browser. I get "Close & Read First Answer". All the answers after the first were blurred. I think this is the first time I've seen a site A/B test how best to annoy people.
Yeah, just like selling alcoholic beverages on Sunday morning is a victimless crime.

I think governments can be pretty illogical at times.
Should Travelers Avoid Flying Airlines That Have Had Crashes in the Past?
"Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians." --Edsger W. Dijkstra

Old arguments are new again because twenty something kids think that they know everything and that the wisdom of programmers from decades past is old, so it doesn't count in today's world of Hadoop cluster Node.js AWS instance startups. This is as true of meta-theorizing about programming as it is about hammering out the details of various software implementations.
http://breach.cc
Do libertarians care about freedom?
Maybe it can be done that way. My interpretation is that the outlawing of prostitution is an old law from long ago when we didn't have the precision for regulation and safety, and it hasn't been revisited yet. Perhaps due to people's personal ethical beliefs.
I still don't understand the argument. They're implementing a new payment method because they believe that doing so will lead to more business.
When hiring, I agree that aptitude is probably a better signal than experience. However, I also think aptitude is much harder to assess during an interview. It's pretty easy to look at someone's work history, github, and ask them a few questions about what they currently know. I'm not sure if I know a truly effective way to figure out their aptitude in a short amount of time.
Show HN: Yo for Cats
My experience, while nowhere close to being representative of the aviation industry at large, has been that large industrial companies are somewhat schizophrenic in this regard.

I often find myself appreciating, for example, the care that somebody put into their automated build tools so that my unexpected corner case (which I originally expected to break things) actually worked the first time without a hiccup. Yet later in the same day I will be cursing the awful, terribly broken two decade old version control system that the same company is paying enormous sums of money to license.

TDD is one of the approaches that I advocate for often, though not the extreme versions that some people advocate for. Some people get it, while others think it's more efficient to wait until the last few days of a waterfall(ish) process before running comprehensive tests (because "testing costs money"). The panic that ensues when they discover a major problem days before a big deadline is never very pretty.
Yes, this is a critical issue at the core of feminist struggle. Read some Dworkin.
> There is the troubling fact that many prostitutes are not in the business of their own free will.

That phrasing usually refers to trafficking. Let's do some numbers.

In 2000-07, there were 1,500 identified victims of trafficking in the USA - total, not a year, and including both sex and labor trafficking.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09...

Arrests alone for sex work is on the order of 100,000 a year (confirmed). An estimate puts the number of prostitutes at 1-2 million.

http://prostitution.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=0...

No doubt trafficking is a big problem in many places - there just isn't any evidence that the US is one of them.

If there mere fact that there exists sex workers who are in the trade not out of their own free will is sufficient to outlaw the trade entirely, there are quite a few trades that would need to be outlawed.
Sleep Deprivation and False Memories
Debugging Swift is terrible right now in Xcode, unless I am not doing it right. Some values can be seen, others are inexplicably missing. Coming from Java/IntelliJ, it's a hopeless mess.

I hope that Xcode/Swift gets better in the debugging department soon. NSLog() is a rough way to see values. It's just so 1996.
It's not intended to be much of a trick, just utilizing the HTML5 history library. Would you opt for HTML5 pushstate with hashtags or just removing it altogether?
I don't think they are a cult in the strict sense. They are a lot like Objectivists, a group who got into an autodidact offering grand claims based on a lot of jargon and handwaving, throwing out invented jargon and redefining terms creatively, and with a bad habit of narcissistically dismissing anything that doesn't fit the model. Since their intellectual, EY, is an autodidact who isn't trained/involved in the fields he claims to have expertise in, there's no body of peers there who will put him in line as he wanders in error, and naturally he's naively dismissive of the academics/experts who bother to offer critiques, or hand-waves away critiques with impenetrable jargon.

They are more frustratingly ignorant, over-certain of thing that are far from knowable, than a cult. People really want to be certain, they want answers, and they will latch onto all kinds of things to get it, even believing in an 'friendly AI' as an ersatz God, with an inevitable singularity as an ersatz rapture, and quantum mechanics substituting for metaphysics.
If you're looking to start reading Worm, and you want to do so in manageable chunks, you might try https://www.comic-rocket.com/explore/worm/ . That'll let you read it page-by-page (of its 306 pages) and note wherever you stop so you can return later.
If the price lowers, I'm going to want to use it to store files instead of my hard drive at home, right? Can you share links with other people to fetch files?

If the price gets higher, I'll want to buy more hard drives for more people to pay me to use my space. Is that how this works, or am I misreading?

If it works like that, it's pure genius. You'd be able to get a lot of use out of it without ever converting it. This is a weird thought, but: could filecoin prop up the value of bitcoin, because the only way to convert filecoin to and from hard currency would be through bitcoin?

edit: Could I boot from this? Could my phone boot from this?

edit2: I'm assuming that the race to claim the proof reward will encourage low latency retrievals. Would I be able to tune my client in order to choose my own balance between latency and security, for example only rewarding quick responders but paying them highly to encourage a more low latency mix? Would that open this new cloud disk space market to quant trading strategies?

edit3: If latency matters, then network topology matters. Different places on the network would be more lucrative than others.

edit4: I'm seeing a workflow where I buy a hard drive, partition it into a local partition and a filecoin partition, then open it up to the network. After a few days, my filecoin partition is full, and I've generated a lot of filecoin. I use that filecoin to start copying files into a mounted virtual filecoin filesystem. I can rsync between local filesystems and filecoin filesystems.

I could actually delegate all of that activity to a single fileserver at the edge of my home network, and have all of my home computers mount files from that (and phones and home automation could call home to it too.)
Hi!

Even though you have a great point there, snarkiness is usually frowned upon in Hacker News.

I'd also like to point out that, even if it's called a Law, it isn't a Law (especially since there's an intent to challenge our notion of currency here).
> Obviously if it were actual "flow", i.e. diffusion, of ions your reaction times would be a lot slower.

The current in cables work similar way - each electron moves forawrd and back by small distance, never moving far away from the place it started in.

But the information about movement (the elecrtomagnetic field) spreads from one electron to another with the speed of light, so the electrons at the end of cable move as soon as the information gets to them from the begining of the cable.

That's why when you press light switch the light starts almost immediately, despite electrons in cables only moving by millimeters per hour.
tl;dr The Churchill-Turing Thesis is true from the OP's subjective experience, too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis
Most definitely. Those that are passionate about their craft will put more pride & spend more time doing it.

I also find it really helpful to maintain friendships with developers outside of the Silicon Valley/startup world who are basically programming to live (as opposed to living to program). They provide me with a counter-balance to the echo-chamber-ish view I sometimes fall into. I have colleagues who will hack out an awesome weekend project just because they love to code. And I have colleagues who are admittedly pretty good at programming, but would rather be building a house or working in their garden. They sometimes encourage me take a step back and understand the things that truly bring me joy.
The hype is inspirational to children, though. An article like this could convince a kid to become a scientist.
I'm pretty certain one could make a geohash compatible partly human readable hybrid that performs way better than this proprietary obscurity.

Something like DE.BERLIN.2.1H

First, human readable part defines a look-up to defined geohash of center of region on a given level.

So DE.BERLIN could resolve to u33, u33d or u33db (length/level 5)
the last one seems reasonable, since a few multiples of the area cover the whole city of Berlin

http://geohash.2ch.to/u33db

Second, optional, part encodes offset of Z-Curve index of location at same zoom level.

Z-Curve on globe: http://www.bigdatamodeling.org/2013/01/intuitive-geohash.htm...

This enables global coverage at any level if needed, and makes the code robust to administrative changes that affect the area of the given region!
The offset part could start at 1 and alternate the sign with each increment.

isOdd(offsetPart) ? -(offsetPart-1)/2 : offsetPart/2;

1 → 0, 2 → 1, 3 → -1, 4 → 2

An offset part of 1 equals an offset of 0 and could be omitted.

The third part adds to the precision of that given cell.

Brandenburg Gate, within area of origin cell of region part.
could be written as DE.BERLIN.1.2M3 or short DE.BERLIN.2M3

http://geohash.2ch.to/u33db2m3

DE.Berlin.2.1H would be the area and center point of the Berliner Fernsehturm with sufficient accuracy
u33db + 1 = u33dc

http://geohash.2ch.to/u33dc1h

This example uses base 32 to comply with geohash but other more error robust encodings and variations (e.g. second part as base ten numerals) could be used as well.

Add optional checksum part based on unshortened geohash if needed to verify integrity.

Variants: since geohash, covers a varying amount of area depending on the latitude. A similiar approach could be realized on a UTM based grid like MGRS if a precise area is required (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGRS)
I'm really not sure how to respond to this.

First of all, the assumptions you've made about what I do and how I do it are false and really, beyond the point of my comment.

Second:

> "[...] real programmers talk about when we trash web programmers"

Has the community fallen so low?
We’ve known Qasar since PG first introduced us to him during our YC summer 2011 batch. Qasar had just sold Talkbin to Google.

Though it wasn’t stated outright from the start, I believe we were used as guinea pigs to test Qasar’s potential as a future target for the YC partnership. We must’ve been one of the first such companies, though there were likely other guinea pigs in our batch as well.

Qasar’s sincere, direct, no-BS attitude blew us away from the start, and we came to understand that he genuinely wanted us to succeed. We had strategy sessions on Castro Street in Mountain View, at Qasar’s own house, and even at Google lunch when scheduling was tight.

Having provided seriously powerful insights and introductions that helped get us off the ground back then, Qasar continues to be supportive through all phases to this day - rain or shine.

I’m proud to call Qasar an advisor and couldn’t be more excited to congratulate him on becoming YC partner.
> The notation is similar

Not at all.

Math notation is ad-hoc and not necessarily consistent. It's just a communication tool.

A programming language on the other hand has to be consistent if you want a machine to parse.
>The problem is that the investment possibilities for Filecoin might be limited since it will be tied to a real world service unlike most other digital currencies.

That certainly hasn't dampened the investment possibilities in actual, government-issued currencies.
Indeed, first thing I thought of was the radiation-using mushrooms at Chernobyl: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070522210932.ht...

Talk about a crazy energy source!
In case you get 503 error, article snapshot at http://www.peeep.us/9dcbdec9
Please feel free to enlighten me! I would genuinely be interested in seeing how we software developers are not alone in this manner.
Errata Security: EFF lies about NetNeutrality
"Churchill-Turing"

I think that just involved dead Nazis.
To me, this seems interesting because of its potential impact on us rather than an impressive feat of evolution.

We'll call this science fiction, but - imagine doing your wiring on the fly with self-organizing bacteria, or having to worry about bacteria evolved to leach off your circuit board.

Since we think of metal and electricity as very lifeless, the author is right to point out that this seems alien, even if it's an obvious and less-evolved form of life.
I didn't watch the whole thing, but from skipping around, I agree. Just seemed like a bunch of interviews. I clicked thinking I was going to be impressed by some special effects or something. Considering most kickstarter videos look better than this, I'm wondering where the $10k was spent.
They need to come clean: either they really care about freedom, in which case they need to support the rights of workers in the workplace

How exactly where the worker's rights violated? Was there a contract or agreement somewhere saying that he was guaranteed perpetual employment, or that drug use (or lack there of) was explicitly NOT to be considered a factor in his continued employment? If not, there's really no valid argument that his rights were violated.

And here's the problem that libertarians always struggle with: real freedom has implications that aren't always obvious, and that can - on occasion - clash with our preconceived biases regarding what is "right" or "fair" or "Just".

I will posit that a "free society" is one where nobody is using force or violence to compel someone to do something against their will. In this world, an employee is free to seek whatever employment he wants, and take or reject any given employment situation without needing to request approval from anyone. He/she can also quit whenever desired. But the flip side is that the employer is also free to end the situation when they want, free from any compelling outside force.

So if you smoke weed and your boss fires you, it doesn't matter if "the state" considers it legal or not. What matters is what your employer thinks. You aren't entitled to a certain job for perpetuity, regardless of your actions. Actions have consequences, and that's a fundamental tenet of libertarian thinking.
"Look at what I've done. Here are my projects" is definitely not the Y-intercept "Look I went to <fancy school>" is the Y-intercept. With projects and experiences you can start to plot someone's work according to it's own Y-intercept and guess the slope. The hard part is assessing someone's slope when all you have is it's Y-intercept ( freshly out of school ).

Concerning asking tricky question, you can do it the Google way ( How many frogs does it take to build a space elevator ) but even they decided to stop these kind of questions or take a lot of time and find something your candidate can work on, even if the technology is known to him, seeing how fast he can appropriate himself the codebase is really a good way to judge your future new recruit potential
Are you referring to the one where he performs sword eating? (I kid you not)
From the article and the slides, I imagine these as p2p federal tradeable karma points. Did I get the big picture?
Its not about PHP, any vulnerable software may be used for infection.

PS You're safe if you have no server :)
Most definitely. Thanks for the good critique
Regarding getting into the aviation industry:

First, a disclaimer: the aviation industry is very large and surprisingly diverse. Different practices exist in different parts of it (engines, airframers, rotar winged aircraft, etc), so it's hard to give general advice. Everything below is based on my personal experience with only the engine subset of the industry.

At the moment it seems like a pretty good time to get into the industry. Hiring is very cyclical, but the companies I follow are generally hiring now. If you know somebody at the company, or even a contractor with the company, that would help of course. With the larger companies, contractors often do a lot of the actual technical work while the primary company manages various projects and contractors, with some of the more ambitious research-y projects conducted in-house (often by M.S. or PhD holders).

Aerospace companies did not begin as software companies, so even though many of their competitive advantages today depend on the quality of their software, a lot of people at these companies--especially older ones who pursued a management path--will not be able to assess your specific technical capabilities (nor will they try). If you have any code on Github, you can mention it as a plus, but some of the people you talk to won't know what a Github is. Some people will understand how desperately their company needs competent software developers, while others will be more interested in how you solve problems in a general sense, communicate & interact with groups, and function in an environment with complex processes and high standards.

You will generally be expected to have a B.S. degree in some form of engineering, though physics and mathematics majors are also hired in smaller numbers, depending on the company. A graduate degree doesn't hurt either. At my company and the companies I work with, there is currently a bias towards more traditional engineering degrees: mechanical, electrical, obviously aerospace; but CS majors are hired as well. The latter are needed most urgently in my opinion, as the former group often ends up writing software that doesn't really require their skills or background, but which could be better written by someone with a CS background who had a strong interest in the application area.
Shop Around for your Healthcare
I used to think this was right (trained in the school of Joel), but now I'm not so sure. I look at it this way: the best predictor of future success is past success. School is pretty non-predictive of your success in industry. General "intelligence" is as well. The best thing I can look at is: do you have a track record of tackling problems and delivering solutions? If you do, you'll probably keep doing that. If not, you're at best a gamble.
Michael Birch Sends Cease And Desist To Airbnb
"millions of dollars directly to abortionists, and making very little effort to convincingly lie about it."
Good, then you shouldn't have too much trouble getting a reliable source to confirm that, right? Right?
Perhaps my reading behavior is atypical - but "Hyperion", "I Robot", "Ringworld", "Stranger in a Strange Land", "Dune" - none of the books I read were in the Kindle Unlimited List, and they were all in the Vancouver Public Library.

I love the concept - but I need at least a 50% hit rate on the books I read before i'll be willing to pay $120/year to use it.
I'm okay with the 4 down votes in 4 hours -- just hoping someone could clarify why. My comment asked:

"Does this have anything to do with the female vs male perspective on programming? Maybe programming can be actually approached with different mindsets -- and it's not a case of either/or...."
Theoretical capacity on the bands maybe?
To be honest you're right, I'm just based on the best known bot and intuition.

Seems like a good math problem.

[EDIT] http://stackoverflow.com/a/22498940 won 100 out of 100 games using expectimax. 100 are not a lot of games, but hey.
Laser-based projection technology will make cinema screens bigger and brighter
Microsoft to cut off all 'external staff' after 18 months
> "you don't pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterward"

How is that about power? It plainly reads as "I want sex, but I don't want to maintain a relationship with a woman to get it." If anything that confirms that prostitution is about sex.
For each person's coin I hold if that person goes "off the rails" then would the value of any of their coins that I hold depreciate (possibly to 0)?

If yes, then how do you protect yourself from folks like Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Bernie Madoff, Mel Gibson, Rob Ford, OJ Simpson... and so forth?
> After a year of struggling with the language, I retook the cognitive assessment, and the results shocked me. My scores had skyrocketed, placing me above average in seven of 10 categories, and average in the other three. My verbal memory score leapt from the bottom half to the 88th — the 88th! — percentile and my visual memory test shot from the bottom 5th percentile to the 50th. Studying a language had been like drinking from a mental fountain of youth.
>
> What might explain such an improvement?

What? 'regression to the mean' comes to mind. People shocked by their extremely low scores are often shocked to find that their scores improve over time...
Yes, I get that. I was responding to user rtkwe who said that latitude/longitude didn't waste information.