skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I love the metric system for no better reasons that it's the one I always used as a french, it just seems as natural for me as my ten fingers, I never really thought about it.
Yet, I can understand why some would not change their “English customary measures”, they must feel it the same way, thinking it's as natural as their feet.
For instance, our screens size (TV, computer, phones) are expressed in inches for whatever good reasons ... I don't have a clue at all about the size it represents, I just know 13 is smaller than 15, 11 is too small for me for a computer screen, and that 42 is a pretty good decent size for a TV.
My surfboard is a 6.2, and for all I know, it's taller than me ...

If I were told, we were going to change our measure system, I would be kind of scared, could it be better or worse !
After all, the hardest part is not the real use but the idea of the switch.

Now, if you could just use the international ISO 216 paper size, I wouldn't have to mess with my PDF export settings and just push some A4.
Google Domains: I want more for new gTLDs | gTLD.club
Evenly distributing 98 markings is hard. Evenly distributing 64 is easy -- just halve the range six times. That's why the distance from freezing water to body temperature is 64 Fahrenheit degrees.
0°C - water turns into ice
100°C - water boils and turns into steam

-30°C and below - very cold weather
+30°C and above - very hot weather
> After the plaintiffs’ lawyers took their 25 percent cut, the settlement would have given about $4,000 to every member of the class.

> Judge Koh said that she believed the case was stronger than that, and that the plaintiffs’ lawyers were taking the easy way out by settling. The evidence against the defendants was compelling, she said.

Can anyone explain this from the perspective of the economic/sociological motivations of the lawyers? People often complain about a huge chunk of the money going to the class-action lawyers who are too eager to settle, but the traditional argument is that a fixed percentage structure (rather than an hourly or flat rate) gives the lawyers the proper incentive to pursue the interests of the class by tying their compensation directly to the legal award.

Here's my best guess: Lawyers, like most people, are risk adverse for sufficiently large amounts of money. (They would rather have $10 million for sure than a 50% chance at $50 million.) On the other hand, the legal award will be distributed over many more plaintiffs. Since it will be much smaller per person, the plaintiffs are significantly less risk adverse. So the lawyers settle even thought it's not in the best interests of the plaintiffs.

This suggests the following speculative solution for correctly aligning the incentives of the lawyers and the class action plaintiffs: either (a) spread the legal work over many lawyers such that the potential compensation for them is small enough that their utility function is at least as linear as the plaintiffs or (b) turn the class-action lawsuits legal team into a corporation which must answer to many shareholders.

Proposal (a) has problems because it might require the number of lawyers to be comparable to the number of plaintiffs, which could be thousands or millions. Proposal (b) strikes many people as weird, and introduces other principal-agent problems, but it does have precedence:

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/looking-to-make-a-pro...

Would love to hear an expert opinion on this.
I implemented the backend for a few early health exchanges (BHIX, NMHIC, NYCLIX, etc). Things change, my observations are a few years old, so YMMV.

#1 - Players are loathe to share their data. Much integration is now occurring because of consolidation, vs interchange.

#2 - Patient privacy can only be protected one of three ways.

a) globally unique identifiers which are then used to hash / encryption the data (translucent database style).

b) centralized storage, ala thumb drive or dropbox.

c) better laws with real teeth.

I don't see a, b, or c on the horizon.

People freaked over RealID. Medicare for All isn't in the cards yet. So no GUIDs.

Centralized storage ala UK's NIH is contingent on single payer, aka Medicare for All. Not in the cards at this time.

As for privacy protections in the law with some real enforcement, well, that'd require consensus that our government should protect the rights of humans.

#3 - I worked very hard on ETL (extract transform load), atomizing HL7 into RDBMS and then back out again. Here's a free idea:

Don't bother. Just log the incoming HL7 (2.x, 3.x, misc other formats like CCA). Then index it with Lucene or equiv. Finally, map/reduce it to process queries.

I was very proud of our backend datastore. I could go on and on about auditing, making various queries performant, modeling, etc. Alas, every player wants to see their data their way, and canonical strategies just aren't feasible across multiple customers.
Have there been rigorous studies to test these claims?
Irritating author Mckenzie Wark rips off a culture he does not understand and does not participate in; produces lots of verbiage and attempts to colonize cyberspace with a sad mixture of rehashed postmodernist philosophy and tragic dreams of revolutions past and never-were.

Sorry, but Mckenzie Wark is not a "hacker" in any sense of the word. As near as I can tell he's a careerist whose main skill is a mastery of the politics of the echo chamber. His obscurantist style is a regression to the worst excesses of post-hegelian academic discourse. And no matter how technophilic it is, cannot mask the fact that the author does not know what he is talking about.

That academic philosophy provides a welcoming habitat for such authors is an indictment of the academy; not a valedictory for it's inhabitants.
880 looks like a trap to keep you in Texas :)

https://www.google.com/maps/@30.1199335,-93.7106707,1513m/da...
People do not follow blogs – they read articles
UK: we work in Imperial but things are officially priced in metric, except for beer. Petrol is in pence/litre. So you get price per lb and per kg. Lengths are in millimetres on builders plans (to avoid mistakes with decimal points) but road signs are in miles. Makes teaching basic maths to adults a bit more fun...

http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/maths_market-metric-proportion...

You would be surprised how many people have issues with decimal place notation still. The low denominator fractions make a lot of sense for a lot of people. French speaking African students of mine will naturally price food in half and quarter kilos.
I am really glad that a second wasn't broken further into 72 pieces.
Well, I think it's just the same as you except 0 is the freezing point and not what seems like an an arbitrary 32 Farenheit for us.
Lovely website and great resource. Can I ask what you built your website with?
We're working on incorporating personalized qualitative feedback into the content so you're provided with an explanation of why your move is incorrect and why the solution is optimal. Specific explanations for every move is probably infeasible, but we should be able to provide reasons for the most commonly played moves.
Some countries aren't known for knowledge outside of the borders.
Sure - we're built on Rails.
The article certainly doesn't sound like he has dedicated his life to professional play

Read the book "Word Freak" and you'll read all about the people that win Scrabble tournaments. It's really sad.
Good idea - we might prompt the user to go back and review the video if they seem to be struggling with the exercises.
Great site! My first chess learning resource at the moment is Mato [0], I suggest to take a look at how his videos are: nice and smart. Another good thing of Mato is that he has not a strong english accent, so for one who is not english motherlanguage like me is easier to understand what he says... by the way: what about adding subtitles?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/user/MatoJelic
Timedrip lets you send timed message to public or friends, you set your own 'showtime', and your message can only be revealed on that time, a countdown timer will be displayed before your showtime.
This is an interesting take on Amazon's propaganda battle. I was going to post this after the Readers United post hit the front page, because I remembered this post and this point:
"While this is not going to happen because this is not the way PR works, I really really really wish Amazon would stop pretending that anything it does it does for the benefit of authors. It does not. It does it for the benefit of Amazon, and then finds a way to spin it to authors, with the help of a coterie of supporters to carry that message forward, more or less uncritically."
The nice thing about the metric system is that the base is consistent - it's always some multiple of 10. With the imperial system, it gets tricky remembering whether you have to multiply by 12 or 16 or 5280 or whatnot.
Body temperature isn't constant. Even excluding abnormal cases (eg fever), normal body temperature not only is within a range, but even this range depends on the body part you use for your readings.

Instead with Celsius at 0°C water freezes, at 100°C water boils.
Thus Celsius makes more sense because the main range (0-100) covers both very cold and very hot temperatures from a human perspective.

Furthemore it has a straightforward conversion to Kelvin.
The things that remain often get 10 ized. we have measuring tape with feet and tenths of feet. Inches are divided into mils (1000th of an inch). So we get base 10 with familiar units of measeure.
wow, running a cable through trees into a hole in a window. That sounds crazy, but a conversation piece for sure!

They ran my circuit to the outside of my house, but would not drill a hold for me to connect it to the inside wiring I had already in place.

I tried to do this myself, measured wrong and ended up tapping into my main power wire with a 1/2 inch 2 foot long drill bit and setting my house on fire. Thankfully the damage was minimal and I was up and running a few days later once power was restored to my house.
But the freeze/boil numbers are arbitrary as well only being true at sea-level. Where I live in Colorado, we're 1 mile (cough, 1.6 km) above sea level meaning those formulas are meaningless.
May I ask which device and browser are you using? Timedrip is built by AngularJs on the client side, so it relies on heavy Javascript.
I wish there was a similar site for Go(weiqi)
All depends what you are used to - I would say 15C or so is "comfortably warm", 22C is definitely "warm" and 40C is utterly miserable with no wind but really nice with a breeze and in the shade....

People generally start sunbathing, wearing T-shirts and flip-flops, when the temperature goes above 10C here...
And what about the weeks in which a leap second was added?
Consider, in 1725, reliably dividing a measured distance into 100 segments. Repeated bisection is practical.
I was aware this could come across the that way when posting and am no paragon of perfection, but that doesn't change my perception. Technical debt is technical debt, and a brittle and complex system that evolves as a patchwork is just an admission of software development driven by bad process.
It depends, there are 2 types of drop - public and private. Public drop will be available to everyone. Private drop is always password protected. 'Quick drop'(non logged in user) is consider as a private drop. You can only create a public drop once you created an account. :)
Amazon discounts “Guardians of the Galaxy” (Kindle graphic novel)
Nothing Says “Sorry Our Drones Hit Your Wedding Party” Like $800,000 and Some Guns
We’re 10 today
This is some very impressive work. Good job!
Same dynamic as the games industry then.
All password protected drop has a little 'lock' icon on the top. Well, I'll try my best to keep the service running as long as possible. But I agree with you, it requires a lot of works to keep any services running in a long run.
Thanks. Best of luck with your venture.
We should abandon base 10 and use base 16.
Thanks for your feedback. I agree with you, I'll put more description on the front page. ;)
As It Happens: Pacific Crest Trail
Yes, they are. Any entity who makes and enforces law is, ipso facto, a government. An entity that doesn't do that isn't a government, even if it calls itself one. That's what governing is, and government is simply that which governs.
If this sort of thing fascinates you, here's a related approach: http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/query/ .. for some reason numerous people were working on image search features like this (i.e. draw what you want to find) 10 years ago but they don't seem to have caught on other than with Google Images.
I've always wondered what level of service a building owner could deliver if they bought a 100Mbps circuit from a tier 1 or tier 2 provider and split it through a building. What about splitting it through a block? Come to think of it, wouldn't that make them an ISP? You could even see a rise in private firms managing CPEs. So maybe this would be your best bet: either get a dedicated circuit into a PoP and pay for a cross-connect, or just subscribe to a lower bandwidth tier 1 line. This obviously depends on the availability of media in your area.
"asteroid mineral yields are not likely to be better than on Earth."

False. See: Planetary Resources.

Rare earth metals are much more common on many asteroids than on the surface of the earth. During the formation of the planet, they tended to sink to the center, where it's very hard to get to.

A single asteroid Planetary Resources is targeting has more than all the rare earth metals ever mined in history.
This kind o article suits perfectly as a pro choice propaganda
I could only wonder if it was written with support for example Planned Parenthood
I think looking for one single cause in any complex transformation is a bad idea, but like most myths, it's an exaggeration of a kernel of truth.

An equality frustrating myth is the idea that pure market forces led us into our current auto-based transportation system because it's just superior to public transport in every way. I think were that the case, public transit would have waned more evenly worldwide.

But I am curious (genuinely) about the other alternatives you mention.
Libertarianism is at least as rational and self consistent as any other ideology, so Reason seems as good a place to read articles as the Guardian or whatever. Are you sure that you aren't in the thrall of some other economic religion, and therefore overly eager to harrumph at the unbelievers?
Although the naturalistic fallacy is real, please remember that the foundations of naturalism have some merit, so it's not a universal fallacy. In fact often-times biasing to 'natural' is the best way to get the right outcome.

This article is a great example of my point: Although there is a war going on in the womb that wastes resources, there are some very important side-effects that can only come of that war. The embryo is robustly tested for viability, cancerous growth is averted, and the embryo manages to get more resources. These are difficult goals to achieve any other way.

Other examples abound: Our diet is normally a delicate balance between cravings, metabolism requirements, our gut flora's needs, and so many more factors. Probably a war similar to the womb plays out in our gut, and probably with similar tradeoffs and benefits. The only way to duplicate this complicated machine is to let the battle play its course properly. So the question is, how do we do that? One answer is to look to the environment where this system evolved — in other words to adopt a naturalistic view.

Interference in these systems leads to the balance being upended, and problems developing. We even see this problem with software! When I worked for a large company doing maintenance on very old compilers, we would not interfere in the code too much for fear of triggering one of these imbalances. I think they arise because architects through the years are at war with each-other to impart their 'wisdom'. The result is a carefully orchestrated dance between enemy code, mediated by testcases.

Naturalism captures the idea that we just aren't smart enough to tackle these problems head-on. And even if we were, it might just be cheaper to allow the war to play out instead of duplicating all of its effects. It's only a fallacy because once in a while we are smart enough.
I started trying Weave 3 weeks back just to see if it works, and to my surprise I connected with some VC folks, talent and bunch of other industry people.
The UX has definitely improved over time, so has the onboarding for new users. When I first used it, I swiped 150 times in the wrong direction and accidentally yes'd those folks. Tinder does clearly show 'rejected' etc while you are swiping. Not sure if this has happened with anyone else.

But, a very useful app, good job guys. Although I would like to set my preferences so that I can see more relevant people (or maybe thats your business model)

Edit: just read the comment from tarr11 which mentions the same issue
>>> Now about those winters...

I actually live on the outskirts of Minneapolis and all the bike trails are usually plowed clean before most of the streets. The bike paths are used year round and the cities work together to make sure they stay clear, even during snowstorms.

I have several co-workers who ride year round and swear they've never had to ride on a trail with a ton of snow.

And besides, all you have to do now is strap on your FAT tires and you're good!

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-04P3j7-1VkY/TyjLZ2MPIcI/AAAAAAAAGO...
As a landlord with 6 rentals, I would say that this is a good letter.

Videoing the apartment is a good idea too (one I think I will do myself!) to record the state it is before and when you move out.

I usually don't have to claim anything out of a deposit when a tenant moves out, with the exception of the really crazy tenants. Crazy like poo smeared walls and leaving the living room filled with garbage all over the floor, etc. Careful tenant screening is the cure for this problem in the long run.
One of the things that keeps me out of the healthcare space is...

I dropped out, after implementing five exchanges, because it became obvious to all of us doing the work that single payer was the only correct answer. All of our customers and partners were competitors and had no incentive to share data.

I didn't anticipate consolidation of providers, perhaps accelerated by the passage of ACA. Babysteps, eventually leading to single payer? I don't know.

Maybe I should have stuck it out.
"attacking my argument for being libertarian is argumentum ad hominem"

No. Saying that the framework you're basing an argument on is flawed isn't dismissing the argument because of a personal flaw of the person asserting something. It's saying that the core axioms/assumptions are flawed.

Maybe you over-identify with that ideology and are taking criticisms of the ideology personally since it feels personal, but it's not at all about you, it's about the ideas you're espousing.
Apple makes an annual revenue of $2m/employee. To put that into perspective, Goldman Sachs makes about $1.2m/employee. Apple has a perfectly good mechanism at it's disposal for retaining staff - pay them more.

I hope they get taken to the cleaners over this.
That's not strictly true - it's practically mandatory here in Edinburgh at this time of year ;-)
Indeed —​ you can't even represent 0.1 in IEEE floating point, so who in their right mind would try to build a measuring system on tenths?
I did this before and ended up in court. If you're renting from a property management company (not an uncommon situation), chances are they have counsel, or are perhaps themselves attorneys. They're willing to play chicken.

(We ended up settling to recover the security deposit).

Style note: it might not be the best idea to repeatedly threaten legal action. First, as I learned recently on HN, doing that can create a procedural opportunity for your adversary.

Second, the law is in fact on your side in these cases, and, as I learned when we sued our landlord, the most effective way to win these cases is statutorily: you carefully establish the timeline and the basis for contesting the damage, and if they don't respond properly, they can auto-lose the case and be on the hook for treble damages.

If I found myself in this situation again, I'd send a note emphatically but emotionlessly contesting the damages, noting dates carefully, and send that registered mail. I would not attempt to educate the landlord on landlord-tenant law.
While I agree that this is a problem in some sense, I also think it's a rather natural consequence of the primary strengths of Haskell: its focus on mathematical abstraction; its rational & precise language theory; and its willingness to impose a learning curve and do things differently.

The Haskell community has an inofficial motto that reads "avoid success at all costs," from an old presentation by Simon Peyton-Jones. The correct interpretation is "avoid (success at all costs)," that is, don't make decisions for "populistic" reasons, and don't be afraid to take the "high road."

Of course, it would be amazing to see much more "practically" oriented teaching material, because as you say there's quite a bit you just have to figure out. But I don't think Haskell is uniquely bad at this. It's just bad in different ways...

Documentation for dynamically typed, "pragmatic" things – like jQuery, many Node libraries, etc – often confuses and annoys me, because I'm so used to Haskell's type specifications and clear abstractions. Granted, I've been coding Haskell for years, and went to a university that uses it as the primary language for students, but I think Haskell libraries are often very clear and easy to use.

Haskell also has truly excellent frameworks and libraries for things like concurrency and parallellism. Simon Marlow's book is exemplary and wonderful; it should qualify as a very good resource for practicing developers.

Yet another point: GHC's type errors can seem obscure for a beginner, and sometimes they're indeed very tricky, but largely, the compiler actually provides loads of helpful information in a clear and well-presented way (searching for contextual info, spell checking, etc). I can't properly express how much I prefer fixing GHC type errors over debugging JavaScript type errors...

Honestly, I think the state of teaching programming is not great in general. I remember the Java courses at university... Learning how to use Swing, UML diagrams, sockets... It's kind of a nightmare.

But regardless of all of this, it's evident that more and more people are attracted to using Haskell for "real-world" systems, and I believe that Haskell's incubation period as an academic language was utterly crucial to its maturation as a novel and strong technology.

(I'm not accusing you of this by any means, but sometimes there's an anti-academic tone in criticisms of Haskell, which I think is completely misguided and frankly dangerous.)
Jay Rockefeller: Internet should have never existed (2009)
Haskell doesn't call them subtypes, but they're implemented using type tags, just like RTTI. Haskell simply uses different words to mean the same thing (and the same words to mean different things). You can't say these aren't type tags just because Haskell doesn't call these things types.
This is the real problem. The extreme majority of the "snobs" as you put it really don't have the pallet or skill to really be able to discern what they think they can, it's mostly brand loyalty, marketing, etc.

There often are people who can discern these things but they're much fewer and further between than people realize. Of course, those in the first category who agree with my statements will never have their mind changed, they'll just assume that they're in the second category. The likelihood of that being true has a lot of zeros after the decimal.

The problem with articles like these is that many "experts" fall into the first category, not the second. This is not without merit though as often these are the same "experts" that people trust to make buying decisions.