skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Societies with fierce weapons are empirically safer than those with outdated weapons."

Here is a gedanken experiment:

Assume that YC decides to invest in SunniTech, a startup that does research into sustainable, ecologically friendly, easy to make, pastel coloured, child friendly and highly lethal briefcase H-bombs for use by Hamas.

Describe in 10 words or less, the impact of this hypothetical decision on :

1. your view of YC

2. the political fall out

3. the regulatory and legal ramifications.
Right now this kind of thing is generally a leadership-driven project. While it's easy to make a space if you have a venue, someone also has to stand up and say "This space is for this purpose and I am going to work on advertising it as that, and organizing it so that it gets people who are interested in this topic in the door and talking to each other and doing valuable things with their time."

And then the technical problem is reduced to how cheaply and effectively they can message people about group activities, with physical presence being expensive/effective and comment threads being cheap/ineffective, and other tools like email, TV advertisement, etc. going somewhere in between. It takes a LOT of time and energy when you're going all-out to build up contact lists and follower counts and push messages out to them and make arrangements and do deals. This is how we now do present-day entrepreneurship; there are companies that go without physical presence, but we like having it around.

If you can solve this in a way that makes it an order of magnitude easier to organize activity, it would be a huge breakthrough for society, because it's the cost of communicating these basic "allocation problems" that ultimately drives the economy into monetized territory.
Does everyone really want tolls and meters for every click and paywalls everywhere?

One of the beauty of the ad model is that it influenced the vast majority of people to publish information in a way that did not require accounts, authentication, or any kind of barriers.

It meant things like crawlers and search engines could exist and scale to the entire Web, without having to make millions of indexing deals or paying micropayments just to index content. It means archive.org and wayback machine can exist.

It meant people could click on a link transaction free.

Though it may displease the people working in the news business, I for one, want to keep the Web as transaction free as possible.

The mobile world of app stores, install apps, and constant freemium nags to buy DLC I hope does not move to the web.

On the downside, some deep pocketed businesses subsidize everyone else's content consumption in exchange for some of their attention. It's a worthy trade for many people. I grew up poor, my parents didn't even have credit cards, we didn't pay for tv, and I had to sell my comic collection just to buy my first computer.

Being able to consume the world's information, ad supported, or charity supported, would be a far better model for my inner city neighborhood of youth than micropayment paywall madness.
Articles like these will continue as long as envy can be used to fuel class warfare.
1% isn't that bad though, considering the minuscule cost of serving one video or one web page. Conversion rates for online ads are at least an order of magnitude lower than that.
As much as I like the idea of free SSL certificates... For anything beyond a personal site, even an hour is crazy.

I can have a basic SSL certificate in 15 minutes at the outside for like $8. My time at work is worth a lot more than $8/hr.
It's exactly like cable, and I think it would suck for the same reason I think cable sucks. Packaged deals like that are only convenient to the customer because payments are brill inconvenient. So you get stuck paying for a bunch of shows and programs you don't want, and thus funnel money away from content creators you enjoy and toward content creators that are good at making deals with the cable company.
Pretty much everyone who buys things on the Internet has a Paypal account.

You may as well say that the inconvenience of opening a bank account is too much baggage for people to use Paypal, except pretty much everyone who wants to use Paypal already has a bank account.

You are correct that trying to get users to put CC details in to pay a "microtransaction" will put people off, but there are plenty of convenient (two - three click) payment processes that already have huge amounts of users.
Prof Mackay's talk pretty much says that in order to use renewable energy the whole UK would have to be covered in electricity generating equipment.

However, 15% of UK energy is generated from renewables (excluding nuclear), which would mean that currently one seventh of the landmass of the UK was covered in wind turbines etc. Which it isn't. You'd be able to tell.

So, one of us has made a mistake with our calculations somewhere.
EBay Payment Subsidiary Braintree in Talks to Accept Bitcoin
1284 Slides Prepared by Ryan Allis for 30th Birthday
Puppy opens its eyes for the first time Secret Life of Dogs
Facebook Donates $10,000 To Politician Fighting Gay Marriage
Is the stupid bite sized content even journalism?
Oh, that is fantastic!
Definitely. Not necessarily a huge/blank check. But there are some people whose opinion I think so highly of, that I'd wanna piece of pretty much anything they were doing; even if my gut reaction to the idea was that it was a loser.

To me, that be no different than giving a brilliant musician an advance on an album even though you have no idea what songs they're going to make.
Slowban? Is this why HN takes several seconds to load if I'm logged in, yet if I'm logged out it is pretty much instantaneous?

Honestly, I can't keep up. There are so many passive-aggressive ways the operators of this site have to fuck with users, that at this point if there is some hiccup with the site, I assign equal probability to some site issue, or I've made another fucking list I've never heard of, for reasons I'll never know, or it's actually nothing at all. Is it confirmation bias? Did I piss off someone 'important'? Who knows?
Funny, I was wondering about this the other day actually. I really like this Melomics tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CddmYrLjCI
They have a website for listening to songs and an API: https://melomics.com/
Delicious still.
My god, if someone created a similar list for undergraduate Computer Science education, I would be astoundingly happy.
Dominion of Melchizedek
Supposedly some facial recognition systems are designed with things like that in mind. They are meant to be invariant to hair style, sun glasses, facial hair, etc. If they weren't they would be less useful.
The Sonic 1/2/CD remakes were actually done from scratch in his Retro Engine (which is just a regular game engine that focuses on Retro-style 2D games). They aren't emulator-backed or anything.
Your point has some merit, the dramatic breakaway is really in the 0.1% or so, but that's only a problem with the title and not the article. It's not talking about the 1% in America. Eg in the first instance it's talking about "senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses", later "Branko Milanovic tries to discover who was the richest person who has ever lived" etc.

The only place with 1% is where they compare the income increase of the US top 1% vs the bottom fifth - yeah, there he should have used a smaller slice from the top (and the numbers would have been more dramatic). But maybe there aren't statistics available at that granularity, since he resorted to using the top 10% for the UK.
> On the downside, some deep pocketed businesses subsidize everyone else's content consumption in exchange for some of their attention

It's more than that. You subsidize by giving up your privacy as these ad companies profile you via tracking as much of your web history as they can.
Thanks! The software I am writing needs to be (easily) installed at the customer site. So, S3 won't work for me. Are there any open source S3 clones that are easy to setup?
"... leap from the - correct, repeatable - conclusions of the study he first cites to the Marxist claptrap with which he concludes. Drivel, utter drivel, and fuelled by hatred. ..."

It's not marxist to suggest there's a problem between senior executives in corporations who are rewarded and reward themselves for failures (Finance & banking GFC) & unwanted externalities (Energy & C02 emissions) or illegality (Media & phone tapping).

I don't think Monbiot is implying founders or creators of tech business automatically fall into that category. Though given the some of the problems in Startup land (female founders face, tech companies colluding on workers and corporate data gathering) I wouldn't say technology companies are immune. I understand your skepticism of Monboit but he's not a 'Jason Ogle'.
The hardware I work with uses a supercap to keep the real-time clock going during power failures. Previously, button cells were used for that.
Rethinking net neutrality – Nicholas Negroponte
Don't have to pay tax, don't have to file anything, just send them 300EUR a year and you're good.
I believe the only portions of the development kits which used Linux was the communication processor, an isolated computing platform bolted on to the hardware to facilitate certain debugging functions.

Sony releases the GPL source code here: http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Others/DECR-1000.html
"... nobody seems to understand the difference between wealth and earnings ..."

Can you explain it for us ill educated folk?
Financial stability from a legitimate high paying career. Where can I use my current covert knowledge and learn the inner workings of this choose your own adventure online saga. I am considering going the robin Williams route..am ibthe only one who realizes I am going crazy???? Am I really a government employee??? Why doesn't anyone at least pay me enough to live comfortably and pay all my bills on time.....why am I denied a living wage.....why can't I even make enough to pay cathy and Greg baclnforball they have done for me?
Another possibility is that one (or more) of the 3 installs spyware on the other collaborators before the generation (or at least before the subsequent destruction) of the private keys. Then the attacker waits a while and then combines all the captured keys to produce the combined private key and claim/spend the mother lode.
The government already does tell you what you can and can't do for a living in regards to classical professions. You can't just hang up a shingle and call yourself a lawyer, an engineer, or a doctor (or other healthcare professional).

The only difference with the Danish example is that the government refuses to write a blank check (student loans) to law schools who want to take advantage of the naivete of students.

The US system would be vastly improved if the government stopped subsidizing the education industry's market distortions, or if the government actually regulated the education market. Right now it is the worst of both worlds with the government helping the education industry to fleece students and other tax payers.
which is good. i don't want some guy i met at a work thing once adding himself to my best friends circle.
"... everything in this article reads like bizarro-land."

Yes, that is how things will look if you live in a sane country like Denmark.

But as the top post in this thread acknowledges, in bizarro-land people structure their lives (and "careers") according to the television. And TV says being a lawyer can only lead to good things. Moreover, most bizarro-land parents will agree with the television set.

There was a Congressional study in bizarro-land a number of years back. The title went something like: "Bizarro-land. Can we sue our way to prosperity?"

There will always be lots of litigation in bizarro-land. Because that is how they do business. When business succeeds, they sue. When business fails, they sue. Litigation is itself big business.

If you read HN, then you know about the USPTO. The bizarro-land government issues rights to sue called patents and trademarks. Needless to say, these rights to sue are extremely popular there; probably more popular in bizarro-land than anywhere else in the world. Why? In bizarro-land, one can never have too many potential lawsuits ready to file.

Can we sue our way to prosperity? "Yes, we can."

There can never be too many lawyers in bizarro-land.

I hope in DK that the taxes people pay go back to the people in some form.

Because in bizarro-land the taxes people pay go to businesses that would otherwise fail. Banks get "bailed out". Universities go after the student loan programs (as mentioned in the article). Pharmaceutical companies go after the medical benefits programs. And so on. Consumers can no longer afford the overpriced products and services of these failing businesses, so the businesses go after the government coffers: get the government to pay for them!

Denmark is one of the better countries you could live in anywhere in the world. Count your blessings.
I'd really really like some in depth post on how these callback capabilities have been implemented. This is quite a big accomplishment for GPU code.
That was an interesting read, but the reporter's breathless assertions frequently got in the way of appreciating Quijada and his idea.

I mean, things like:

> A sentence like “On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point” becomes simply “Tram-mļöi hhâsmařpţuktôx.”

Simply?

We could have used LZW algorithm and the sentence could probably become even shorter, just a "simple" sequence of random-ish bytes. If you increase the number of allowed symbols, of course you need less symbols to convey the same information. If you allow for a limitless set of words that are dynamically generated from combining many roots, of course the number of words decreases... sometimes down to 1, as in polysynthetic languages. This is Information Theory 101.
Want to make cheap and easy INTERNATIONAL CALLS? Use TagCalls.com. Video
I think it's a great lesson for any creator. Just because you have invented something does not necessarily mean you have the right or are capable of dictating how people use it.

I seem to remember Umberto Eco mentioning that he does not offer his own interpretations of his novels for a similar reason, but I can't find the quote.
I was expecting another disappointment but no, on this somewhat dated system it runs great, and I was really impressed with several of the demos, even manipulating/rotating them in real time with the mouse, all running quite smoothly: Chromium Version 36.0.1985.125 Ubuntu 14.04 (283153), i5 2.8 Ghz, 6 Gb RAM
> However, 15% of UK energy is generated from renewables (excluding nuclear), which would mean that currently one seventh of the landmass of the UK was covered in wind turbines etc. Which it isn't.

Most likely brought in from other countries, and the wind parks in the North Sea.

Many local utilities in Germany hold stakes e.g. in a Norwegian (iirc) dam project, so they recieve a given amount of electricity output. This increases Germany's renewable-source amount even if the energy itself isn't produced in Germany.
^ this. so now we know the govt may not be on top of it enough to really utilize this info, but it is all out there..and when these activities get privatized, there will be a larger cause for concern
The 64-bit has been done: I've seen it. 0000000000000001, I think?
Sure, but market signalling in a profession which takes years of education and training can lead to the same issues.

And this article shows that market signalling is largely not working in this case (because people do not approach education on a rational market basis).
In general humans have a sense of time. This is why the graveyard shift is so incomprehensibly difficult for human beings. At the core humans require routine but beyond that thoughtful activities lend themselves to daylight.

Depression is also strongly related to being in the dark, probably linked to us needing vitamin D.
This runs surprisingly well in chrome/android.
Use Arch Linux and Xmonad on MacBook Pro with retina display
Aka most common undergraduates who study math do not know math.
This is a great project. Love that you did this for your grandfather.
The Complete and Undeniable Truth – Larken Rose
Bay Bubble
> Our investigation found that many of the companies are involved with a web of powerful multiple data broker partners who, unknown to the EU public, pool their data on individuals so they can be profiled and targeted online.

I would like to see the consumers' faces the day they understand that companies like Google have been tracking their every step on the Web via background requests to Google's properties such as Google Analytics - for ages.
> Curious, anybody know how they design around this?

Usually the stuff is hidden in a vacuum, which is a pretty good shield for heat.
Great videos. Definitely not virtuostic, but fun. It's harder to define the kind of virtuoso performance in a group, which may be why full orchestra digital synths have made more convincing progress than individual instrument performances.

There are also some "easier" traditional instruments to target. A Hurdy Gurdy for example has far fewer modes of expression than a violin does and might be a nice physical model to base an instrument off of, in fact it's not too different than the Electric Eel you pointed out in your videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8zGZJQ5yps

Which of course provides an entirely different set of expressible performance options than even something like a Nyckelharpa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sfBcWvVUbs

> Yes, theremin

I've always hated the way theremins sound. There's an aspect to the sound, a buzzing sliding sound inherent in the instrument that I could never quite cotton onto. It reminds me a bit of electric violins which I toyed around with a little as a teenager. Something about the way they work eliminates quite a bit of the performance.
Wow, only one paragraph article of this actually talks about wealth destruction. It starts off as a very ordinary article about corporate psychopaths, then half way through veers off into discussion about wealth inequality.

This kind of article does more harm than good for those who want to reduce inequality.
In Australia a casual fast food/takeaway employee gets paid a minimum of 3 hours per shift, even if the shift is cut short.
http://www.fairwork.gov.au/Employee-entitlements/hours-of-wo...
here in the philippines its 1500 pesos for 5 mbps with phone. Its a contract
Also read http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html for some more examples of how hard it is distinguish "ads" from other "real" content and news.
Any Growth Hacking ideas for an online bookkeeping start up company?
Hi, I have recently learned about Growth Hacking and am wanting to know if anybody on this
forum has any growth hacking ideas for an online bookkeeping start up company in Australia?
In short, we will offer an online bookkeeping services that provides audit proof financial statements from professional accountants to small Australian companies, and are looking for growth hacking ideas to help us grow.
Any ideas and advice on this will be much appreciated.
Nope, Scotland over produces and sells to England, but that's still UK, at least for another month ;-)

Offshore wind was included in the impossible. There's something off in his figures. Perhaps wind turbines have become more efficient since he first made his calculations?
Is there an open Health/Fitness Api?
Hello Hackers. I’m a long time reader, first time poster with a question: Is there an open health and/or fitness tracking api?

Obviously with the rise of wearable technology, fitness tracking has become very popular. And many a company have created systems for tracking, storing, and analyzing the data. These include the forthcoming Apple Healthkit and Google fit, but also include Microsoft Healthvault, Nike Plus, Fitbit, and RunKeeper HealthGraph to name a few. But all of these are limited to what the technology company allows you to store/retrieve and require you to put your health data on their servers.

Therefore, I am wondering is there a such thing as an open health/fitness api. This would like be a combination of open source, platform agnostic and self hostable.
Wikipedia: Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions
Using private npm to deploy code
"... they've all achieved 1% status much more through intelligence, creativity, commitment and resourcefulness than by birthright, luck or psychopathy ..."

I don't disagree with this statement for founders being truly having the 'intelligent, creative, committed and resourceful' attributes you state but are they 100% responsible for the outcome? Are these attributes true indicators of their success? Is this misattribution bias after the fact?

Follow the money.

What would a 'high-flyer' breakdown look like? Would they be mostly US based (including foreign born), White/Asian, tertiary educated males? (bias acknowledgement).

Did they need extra funding? How many received VC money? How did the VC choose one particular company/idea over others (by skill or luck?) How did the founders get their money? (hint: is it harder for non validated entities to raise VC money or not?)

Given the high failure rate of Startups and VC investment, the article may well apply to those who supply capital.
I use Turbosquid for free 3D models, and then customize them in Lightwave or Blender. I work on my own textures.

For audio I rely on Looperman for free music and sound fx.
Formatting legacy stuff was always part of the deal, but at the same time, I was never interested in being able to host vim. Some people disagreed rather vocally.

One of the things I discovered was just how much legacy cruft is really around. Not just things like ANSI colors, but e.g. grotty syntax. It made no sense until I realized it was created for teletype printers... it underlines things by backspacing after every character and printing a "_". It bolds by backspacing and repeating the character. I had to parse this to support man pages, and I assume the default TTY still does too.

The other thing was that so much of Unix workflow really only works by accident. The fact that you can ssh + sudo + ssh + ... is because the pipes are too dumb to fuck it up. Take for example SSH escape sequences... [1] they only work on the first hop. The proper solution is out-of-band signaling.

From an architecture point of view, the whole termcaps / stdio thing is crazy. The Unix principle is supposed to be about simple agnostic composition, and yet most tools have to sniff out their environment in order to maintain this illusion. Text files are for people, not machines. And if you want to see a never ending discussion, just ask a bunch of greybeards how to write a shell script that can handle files with spaces in their name.

[1] http://lonesysadmin.net/2011/11/08/ssh-escape-sequences-aka-...
thank you. I havent heard of it =)
IIRC, Facebook used to have this feature (ages ago), but it was removed. It used to ask where you knew someone from when sending a friend request, and it didn't let you send the request if you didn't know the person.
Seems to rely heavily on the following source, including subsequent parts of an ongoing series of articles:

http://digboston.com/boston-news-opinions/2014/08/boston-tro...
I grew up playing the violin and one of the reasons you don't really hear good synth approximations of a string instrument is because on a real instrument there are thousands of subtly different ways of playing a given note.

That's similar to what moving from acoustic guitar to sitar ($100-300ish for a starter) felt like. I'd still like a hang though ($5000) or a clone thereof ($1500-2000).
I'm not sure you get all the nuances of the story. Caesar is just as nuts as Vladimir Putin, who goes bear hunting bare chested.

It's just a piece of political propaganda that has survived through the ages, all the way until today. There are more examples in this day and age, for example the myths surrounding Alexander the Great.