skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nothing, not even the risk of municipal-infrastructure-shennigans-leading-to-disaster, should stand in the way of more competition entering the ISP market. Google Fiber is awesome and all but they're pretty much the only company big enough to tackle large-scale rollouts nationally. These smaller, municipal efforts have much lower barriers and will ultimately provide the market the kind of competitive landscape it needs to begin improving.
If I wanted to eat at a highly-acclaimed restaurant and was given the option of either waiting three months or paying some fee of $X to guarantee a reservation tonight, then there are some non-zero values of X in which I would gladly pay.
Artificial Intelligence Resources for beginners
> The US is 31st worldwide on bandwidth speed (which really can't be explained by the US's size alone)

By what measure? Certainly not Akamai's (http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai-soti-q114.pdf?WT.mc_i...). The top 10 U.S. states (much of which are in the Northeast and are Comcast territory), would appear comfortably in the top 10 of the global rankings (compare page 14-15 with page 18).

On Ookla's ranking, the U.S. is quite comparable to other big western countries (France, Germany, UK): http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries. Compare the U.K., at 29 mbps, with comparably-dense northeastern states like New York (35 mbps), Massachusetts (33 mbps), etc.

Indeed, if you look at Ookla's rankings, you can see that density/wealth is a driver of internet speeds: http://www.netindex.com/download/2,1/United-States. Sparsely populated or poor states like Wyoming or West Virginia are down in the 15-20 mbps range. Rich, dense states like New York and New Jersey are at 35+. The U.K. and Germany are ~600 people per square mile, somewhere between New York State and Connecticut in density. The U.S. as a whole is only 90 people per square mile, and states like Wyoming are less than 10 people per square mile.

EDIT: I don't normally get annoyed at down votes, but I point these facts out every time someone repeats the trope "the U.S. lags in broadband speed!" but I never get a real answer, just down votes. The narrative that the U.S. lags behind in broadband speeds seems pretty central to criticisms of U.S. broadband policy, but the surveys I've seen that measure actual speeds (as opposed to advertised speeds), contradicts the assertion that the U.S. lags behind its counterparts. Can someone explain why they disagree with this analysis?
Me thinks you haven't used emacs as much as "other text editors." There are very few features that people "wish" emacs had, that it doesn't actually have.

Specifically, language recognition is not just regexes in emacs.
This is not move against government mass surveillance (collecting intelligence).

This is criminal case and the question is the limits of legal discovery.
So we can't but Canada can?

As straining-of-credulity as such a bumper-sticker is, isn't that the logical conclusion?

Very Serious People ( with whom I happen to agree) actually say such things in "Fragile By Design". Calomiris/Haber are good writers and good thinkers. They do not call out medical nor political leadership there, but it's not exactly a stretch.

It's a short drop from this to the view of America from "V for Vendetta".
"Six to eight weeks" was the default estimate my project managers gave for anything above trivial. Long enough to make the task seem difficult, not too long to scare off the client.
Microsoft’s New Web Server, Katana, Hits Version 3
No, but I'd happily make a non-refundable down-payment on my meal in exchange for a reservation, especially for short notice (<48 hours) reservations. I'd much rather such a system than any of (1) restaurant won't take any reservations, (2) no reservations for the next 2 months, (3) paying for a scalped reservation, (4) and/or waiting in line.
The thing is, according to the judge, this is not an appealable order, which is why she lifted the suspension she had set to allow the appeal.
So how are those special Swift initializers working out?
As a guy who was way into OpenStreetMap 3 or 4 years ago, the amount of data and tools flying around now, in relation to back then, is breath-taking.

Long live open data.
I'm amazed how even these US judges cannot see what is wrong with this. Or are they themselves under pressure/threat from the executive and NSA/CIA?
Big telcos lobby for laws to make it illegal, e.g. Louisiana 844.42 [1]:

"To ensure that cable television services and telecommunications and advanced services are provided through fair competition [...]"

Advanced services are defined in 844.43 [2] to mean Internet that's faster than 144 kilobits per second.

This means that the wifi in MSY (New Orlean's airport, a government facility) is utterly unusable.

I can understand the narrative: having government skim the good stuff is a bad deal for corporations since government can do things corporations can't (e.g., taxes, zoning, land use permits, seize land). Presumably, this discourages corporations from providing comprehensive services since they cannot subsidize poorly-performing areas with great performing areas. I'm skeptical that that's a valid reason to have such a law, but c'est la vie.

[1]: http://www.legis.state.la.us/lss/lss.asp?doc=285523

[2]: http://www.legis.state.la.us/lss/lss.asp?doc=285524
Space Cadets and Rat Utopias
I've never seen a doctor research anything either (although I'm sure they do behind the scenes).

Yup, they do it behind the scenes. They worry that too many patients would complain and feel insecure about a doctor having to do research in front of them, since the majority of patients want to feel that their doctor is the expert on all matters of their health. If a patient feels the care he/she wasn't up to par, and there are any complications, there is generally a very high risk of a lawsuit. So to prevent that, most doctors will do research outside of the view of the patient.

To be fair, they aren't sitting at their desks pulling up Wikipedia. Their research often consists of consulting with a specialist (or multiple specialists), consulting with colleagues, and searching through the volumes of medical periodicals and databases.

Most do this not just to be thorough and careful, but also because they know they need to practice defensive medicine and, well, cover their butts in case anything goes wrong.
"(The stars) remind us of the puny distances we men travel; the nearest one, Alpha Centauri, is four light-years away, far beyond our capability to visit today or in our lifetime, yet beckoning, mocking us and our dreams." - Mike Collins (Apollo 11 astronaut)
No. You have no right to use the image. Copyright doesn't distinguish personal versus commercial use, only fair use (parody) and educational use. Sorry.
The Great Unread
So I'm scrolling back in my comments. Not all converge. Here is a long one where I learned something: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8228967

Here is a rather deep one that later led to a productive offline conversation. We didn't converge to a conclusion, but we did figure out what data was needed to find one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8219369

I know these threads are ugly, but I don't think they are unproductive. I have certainly learned quite a bit from such threads (about analytical philosophy, computer security, marketing), and have changed my opinion on a number of matters.

As for the suppression of naughty comments, it's posts like this one [1] that suggests suppressing certain discussion if it makes YC look good. I know YC has been targeted in the past, and it appears that Altman wants to head off future attacks.

I have no doubt that all else held equal, you'd like to make HN a better place. But make HN a place with better discussions but also a focal point of criticism for YC?

[1] http://blog.samaltman.com/what-ive-learned-from-female-found... Specifically this comment: "And we're working on something to improve the quality of Hacker News comments."
Gin, Glorious Gin: How Mother’s Ruin Became the Spirit of London
Does the artist sell posters or prints? If they do, then I would say you are in weird territory, about the same as watching a movie illegally. If they do not, then I don't see the problem because it is not on public display and there is no financial loss.

The only other issue I can possibly see you having depends on the who prints your poster. Some places will try to reject if they think it is copyrighted, mostly because of fear of lawsuits from photographers and artists - but this might not be an issue at all.
Maybe this tool works, maybe it doesn't.

We sort of have to develop the habit of classifying producer-surplus-gain ( what people make above the cost of goods and services ) into rents and profits, where profits are proportional to "consumer surplus". "Consumer surplus" is the difference between what you pay for something and your reserve price for it. If you'd pay five bucks but get it for three, you have consumer surplus of two bucks.

Then and only then can we have even a hope of coherent discussion about "profit making enterprises". But one man's rent is another man's profit; it's all pretty nuanced.
I wonder if in the future, doctors will become more like bearucracts. You go to the internet, find out what you have.
Then you fill out the appropriate form, go to a doctor who stamps the decision with a red mark of approval, granting you access to medication / surgery.
This was a really nicely written and nuanced article, and your TL;DR doesn't do it justice.
> Should I be afraid of someone with more resources building a prototype before I can, or patenting it, etc.?

In a word, yes. The U.S. Patent system has recently changed from a first-to-invent rule, to a first-to-file rule. In some cases this may mean that someone can take your idea and file it is his own. It's not supposed to work that way, and there are various safeguards, but the possibility exists that someone could simply take your idea and claim it as his own.

http://www.blankrome.com/index.cfm?contentID=37&itemID=2884

The bottom line is, if you have an idea you think may be patentable, you should file it before revealing it to anyone.
Apparently the libstdc++ people aren't entirely convinced by the growth factor claims:

https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/libstdc++/2013-03/msg00059.html
Its funny after so many years Code is still called Text in assembly.
That's a big part of modesty :)
Violating the EU data protection directive would make microsoft liable for a fine of up to 5% of global turnover. Microsoft has been the recipient of EU fines before, so they are likely to wish to play it safe. On the other hand, violating a court order will find them in contempt of court, which may also lead to coercive fines. Since they're facing fines either way, can we assume they are actually making a moral stand here?
The ABCs of VCs
These are so great! I recognized a couple of them from hacker news as well -- so perhaps they might be usable here in a semi-automated way to detect bad conversations?

(I know there's already a flame-war detector. But other patterns might be useful as well.)
That older engineer... was it Scotty?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708764/quotes?item=qt0349432
Simple answer -- the earth's surface heat energy is radiated away into space, the ultimate heat sink. Barring any limiting factors like atmospheric CO2 to prevent loss of energy, and absorbed sunlight, the surface temperature could fall to 2.7 Kelvins, the so-called CMB and the universe's background temperature.
What prevents adding other languages to the web browser even now?
The factor-2 discussion is quite interesting. What if we could make the next allocated element always fit exactly in the space left over by the old elements?

Solving the equations suggest a fibonacci like sequence, seeded by something like "2, 3, 4, 5". Continuing 9, 14, 23 etc.
There are a lot of good options that don't involve staying in a line or rushing to make a reservation.

I've heard about restaurants wanting charge for reservations by "prepayment of the meal", and it's somewhere I wouldn't go to.

"Alicia’s reluctance to user her and her restaurant’s name suggests one reason: customers are very sensitive not only to prices but to the perception of a rip-off."

Exactly
I go to a doctor who always takes his own blood pressure readings. He also goes over every word that the nurse has charted, to make sure that he's not missing anything.

I have moved a few times, and I now happily make the two+ hour journey to see this doctor every time I need anything routine or that my major-city's doctor has a 2+ week waiting list.

This is in sharp contrast to last night, where my significant other visited the emergency room and the doctor came in and asked us why she weren't taking the medicine that our a doctor wrote for her on Wednesday. The kicker: she hadn't been to the doctor on Wednesday -- he completely screwed up everything, and then refused to see her again for the rest of the night, basically, making the OB/GYN nurse come down after surgery to talk to her and then the nurses.

My Small town doctor that I drive two+ hours for is much more amazing, happier, and gives me better care than my Cincinnati doctor. I can say the same about the dentists, and opticians that I've visited in Cincinnati as well.
By that logic we all better stop using tap water, roads, libraries, schools and parks before we get hit upside the head with that "boondoggle".
Increase Alexa Ranking Fast 2014 Free Method
>and municipal infrastructure projects are a disaster outside a few well-managed cities like NY

citation needed... I know government has a reputation for being wasteful and corrupt, but weird for you to defend NYC.
Why no one will call Russia's invasion of Ukraine an invasion
How is it reasonable to expect that previously freed memory would be available later for the vector to move to?
> or disproportionately benefit parts of the population

Wouldn't more people be able to afford internet access under this municipal connection's pricing than under Comcast/Verizon/Time Warner/etc? I have trouble understanding how that would be a disproportionate benefit.
He was not modest. He wrote the comment to say how much better his county medical system is. Except that he did not specified the country, so there is no way to verify his claim.

Many non US healthcare systems have bureaucracy or long hours too or both too.
Cable could easily offer these rates by using the bandwidth currently occupied by their tv channels. If comcast had a unified digital backbone it wouldn't be a problem. It is only because they have monopoly power. I find it completely distasteful the number of laws that prevent other entities from passing laws in certain domains. Washington state has a law that prevents cities from legislating any form of rent control.

We need to clean out these bullshit laws.
Presumably the email is 'owned' by an american and the case involves all american actors(cant really make that assumption I guess)

Indeed, sounds like a dubious assumption to me.
There are some places that are remarkably successful and ticket for tables: http://website.alinearestaurant.com/site/2014/06/tickets-for...
Very good point - although you'd think it would be possible to have models and feedback for models that would scale.

I expect the "higher GDP" tells us a lot. I first discussed this with my Dad when we took one of us the the Emergency Room for stitches ( it just wasn't a summer as a kid without a bike wreck or something leading to stitches ) and I was shocked by the bill - in 1972.

I'd be pressed to find the reference, but people have shown that proportional percent of income ( in the aggregate, GDP ) spent on medical care has been consistent between countries.

I hold that employer-based health care has turned out more sour than it perhaps once was because employment has gotten weirder. That arguably was not true in, say 1950. But medicine was also smaller then.
Most interesting part of the article: USTelecom would like "public entities [to] bear the same regulatory burdens as private service providers".

What's that about? What regulatory burdens are these public providers avoiding, and are those burdens in the public interest or not?
Chill out, danneu. You misunderstood me.

I'd be the last person to say don't build a business! I'm saying the opposite. Selling time does suck and selling a product or service is much better.

All I'm saying is that if that's what you want to do, then do it properly. Don't waste time on "passive" stuff. Actively build a business.
You can always tell the premeds as an undergrad - they are the ones who ask "will this be on the test?"
Demanjo.ca
A 5,760 cores Nvidia  GPU will help accelerate deep learning
Shameless plug, but I wish I had this feature in Emacs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8247426 ;).

I'd make it myself, but between work, thesis and procrastinating on HN, I'm not going to do this anytime soon.
At least they are consistent.
It's interesting, I remember listening to NPR awhile back and they had a story about how high end restaurants are experimenting with a "ticket" system for reservations. Part of the problem is that even for restaurants where say you reserve well in advance for a holiday, it's surprisingly common for people to cancel at the last minute. So, some have tried to have people prepay for the meal. It might only work for rather pricey restaurants though...Here's the link:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/08/05/337834577/no-mor...
Maybe I've missed it, but is data requested belonging to a US or non-US resident?
Given the subtlety of the effects, I would like to see blinded washout crossover.
Why the hell not?
Do you know how you look on social media?
I came here to mention the first title. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as I recall LSD not only reached the computer scientists early on, it more or less was introduced via such academic circles.

The other day I reflected on the fact that the project I have been working on for the last 3 years have such strong connections with my first psychedelic experience. Sometimes I wonder about the worth those things, questioning what ultimately can be gained from that so-called ineffable, even as a source of inspiration. And I'm the first one to trivialize it too, to debunk it as pretty much any intoxication. But then again, you can shrug it off, it doesn't hurt you, or change you: it's only significant if you are open to it. So it just seems to me that it would be silly to be cynical about something like that, to doubt the good of something that really just opens your mind a bit.
Thank you for your input. I am aware of the relatively new law change, and I should have mentioned it in the question (I edited it so that it is now). It is actually the reason I am asking. If we were still first-to-invent, I would go ahead and discuss away with any incubator I wanted, making sure to keep good records of my communications.

Filing presents two obstacles: time limit and cost. Filing a full patent requires lots of money, and filing a provisional patent gives you only a year to choose whether to file a full patent, or the idea is forever unpatentable.

It is really constricting to have to decide these things before being able to talk freely about it.
Is there a benefit to compiling your code as you go?
Originally posted 2 months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7975436
Dude, chill. Not to intrude on your fantasy world too much, but a few things:

1. The left wing of the baby boom is going to die with the right.

2. The baby boomers were famously a bunch of hippies and radicals. More seriously, they were easily the most liberal-minded generation in America at the time--and they may still be.

3. This country's ongoing demographic transformation into Brazil is not going to help the health care system, or move us toward a "more perfect union", or do anything at all positive in general. It baffles me that people think things like that.
Let's see north east US, Main = 14 MBPS or 0.1 MBPS faster than Mongolia woot!

Comparing nations to states is ridiculous. However, if you read the report it's damming with faint praise. "the average connection speeds
seen in the United States and Mexico remained more than
twice as fast as the next fastest country"

Sure, if you discount everyone that's better than you then you can call yourself #1 at anything.

PS: Note this is of course average bandwidth which radically distorts the picture. One person nominally at 1GBPS and 10 people at 1MBPS is not the same as 11 people at 90+MBPS. For a more realistic vew you would average the square roots of bandwidth, but that makes US look bad.
Although today's fact of "Birds' knees actually bend backwards" is incorrect. Birds' knees bend they same way as our knees. What we think of as a bird's knee is actually more like their ankle.

http://skeletaldrawing.blogspot.com/2011/09/um-hey-scientifi...
It's cheaper to lobby the government to prevent competition and maintain the status quo than it is to upgrade your networks.
Unconstrained corporatism.
I think it's because there's a general cost in uncertainty for table occupancy. A reservation makes that go away.

If you have a restaurant that will always have a permanent line waiting on tables, then maybe you could charge. But it would be easier to hide that cost in the bill.
I think that if one did get such messages then it'd be better, since folks would have an incentive to fix their pages, of not rely on JavaScript (which would be even better … I'm tired of blood which won't display text without me having to grant them acres to run coffee on my system.
The last mile should be open to the people and supported as infrastructure. I should be able to send packets across town for zero cost.
The American Society of Civil Engineers says that U.S. infrastructure is underfunded to the tune of $3.6 trillion: http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org. People like to compare municipal broadband to municipal water, but the ASCE gives our water and wastewater systems a grade of 'D'.

I defend NYC because as corrupt as it may be, over the last 20-30 years it has a pretty good record of getting municipal projects done. It has functioning subway, regional rail, etc. It has invested in protecting its water sources, etc.

Most American cities have not done as well as NYC in that regard. E.g. Atlanta's ancient sewer system dumps untreated waste into the city's main river after every heavy rain, and the city's water supply is entirely at the mercy of the water levels in Lake Lanier. After a drought a few years ago, the city came this close to running out of water.

This is not voodoo economics. In the absence of profit motive, you need social consensus and a forward-looking bureaucracy to ensure that public infrastructure receives adequate funding. Most American cities do not have either.
Good thing we don't get our water from Comcast.
Risk Management Is Project Management for Grown-Ups [video]
Hi there, and thanks a ton for taking the time! I´m Baard, one of two people currently working on this project.

1. Facebook login/signup will come.
2. Agreed! This will for sure be a top priority for us to achieve.

We´re for sure working on a pitch to make strengths and highlights stand out. We´ll probhably need some iterations to get to the point we want to be. :-)

I can´t see why your username should not be valid, I´ll put that in the todo-list. It sure should be a valid username to pick.

As mentioned, the facebook posts are redirected to home page because you´re not logged in. We´ll change this once we go out of the experimental phase, which are kind of the state the project is in right now.

Also, we´re the majority of the norwegian population at round.io at the moment, yes. ;-)

Again, thanks a ton for your feedback, it was really helpful.

Best regards,
Baard