skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>that can be solved with very simple things like diet and exercise.

"Very simple", applied to diet? Try very controversial.

There are tons of different "good diet" theories, and many of them are mutually contradictory.

I've tried several, and done a lot of research. I've settled on "low carb" as sustainable, healthy, and actually effective -- and it doesn't need to be terribly expensive (though it's likely more expensive than subsisting on grains).

But getting people to change their diet -- really change -- is really hard. For low carb, it means no possibility of fast food (except the occasional burger or grilled chicken patty sans bun -- no fries with that!), so you have to plan more carefully. And if you don't want to be eating all-meat, you have to cook low carb vegetables and eat salads.

When I tell people how I eat, they generally tell me they couldn't eat that way, and the reason is that they have their own food habits/rituals that involve carbs. And it typically ends there.

If there were more places that were low-carb-friendly, it would be much easier. But aside from the occasional BBQ joint that offers non-sweet sauces, it's really hard.

[By the way: when you say "sugar diets", are you including all simple carbs in that? Because eating cooked potatoes gives you a faster "sugar rush" than eating sugar; to really fight metabolic syndrome, you need to get rid of high glycemic index foods as well, and ideally just eliminate carbs entirely. Natural fats, on the other hand, are fine if you eliminate carbs. I refer to my diet as the "bacon and dark chocolate" diet, because I can pretty much eat as much of both as I feel like -- and yet I've lost more than 30 pounds.]
Online fashion giant Zalando confirms Frankfurt IPO plans for 2014
Well, I suppose the standard answer, if you have time to do the equivalent of a college course, would be "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", aka SICP[1]. On the more practical side, you've got Steve Yegge's "Emergency Elisp" article[2].

In terms of your "brackety confusion", that's just a syntax issue. Just remember that you only have function calls, not anything else, and that functions appear inside their parentheses. Instead of infix operators like "+", you have functions; instead of control structures like if/while, you have functions (special functions called macros, but you don't care about the difference yet). So in your head, just convert an "operation" like "1 + 1" to a function call using the "+" function: "+(1, 1)"; then put the function inside the parentheses instead of outside and drop the commas between arguments, and you have a valid Lisp expression: "(+ 1 1)". Really, try evaluating that in the Emacs scratch buffer. Other than that, the syntax is pretty much the same as any other language. There's just less of it. If you did everything in Python/Perl/whatever using just functions, it would already look a lot like Lisp.

[1] http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

[2] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/emergency-elisp.html
Thanks for your post. IMO every innovation should necessarily improve predecessor - products. Hence a "smartwatch" would need to be as available as my aviator chronograph is. This means, I wouldn't wear a smartwatch, that needs to be charged twice a week. Your comment on wasted life - time is indeed true. A watch, that'd show me the same notifications as my smartphone, is rather pointless. Build a valuable network around your product, focus on design and MEANINGFUL functionality. Happy to discuss this in detail.
Advanced API Security by Prabath Siriwardena

Just started it, but so far it's a well-written discussion of OAuth, OpenID Connect, UMA, and JSON for API security.

The State of the Art by Iain Banks

I have been forcing myself to ration out the Culture books so I don't run through them too quickly. Such a great series.

The Trauma of Everyday Life by Mark Epstein

The fourth book I've read by him, a really good synthesis of Buddhism and psychology. I was pleasantly surprised to see him appear in Dan Harris's 10% Happier, too.
Why you should learn more programming languages
As an amateur or beginner carpenter you only have maybe a saw and a hammer in your toolbox.

And you are struggling to use those tools without cutting your fingers off.

As you become a more experienced carpenter you learn the limitations of those tools.

So you add more sophisticated tools. Tools that beginners/amateurs don't have the experience to use. Or even understand the benefit of.

Some of the tools you only use for certain jobs. But you have the experience to know when to use each tool to get the best results.

That is what makes the difference between an amateur and expert carpenter.

It is also what makes the difference in how much they get paid for their work.
Sometimes it's useful to read the blog post before commenting.
> Definitely not.

Have you used both professionally? Not being arsey, seriously interested.
I guess using a connection queue is preferable? (Although it complicates the software stack a bit.)
Doesn't it brush dangerously with schizophrenia, though? Given that anxiety and stress are common factors leading a person under risk into losing sanity, I feel that something like this could backfire and drag someone over the edge. But then I'm no psychologist.
https://zulip.com/hello
I can't tell if you're accusing me of this religious belief or not, since I framed this as "the government is (could be) the solution" - a rather opposite attitude to the one you described.

There are many sorts of cynical, overly sour people. The kind you describe is certainly one of them. But I don't see the relevance of their existence?
What if I old you it's possible to be influenced by considerations other than emotional appeals to help "the little guy"?
Hide one inside the power outlets upstairs and you need not worry about batteries... Just gps reception and cell signals.
Is there a good, paid, gmail alternative with the same conversations, labels, keyboard controls, and decent search? Ideally with both webmail, calendar, and an app? Also, ideally not associated with microsoft, yahoo, or even the valley? I keep seeing fastmail but it looks like just another email provider.

I keep pondering creating a service like this for say $40/year, but I'd rather to it than build it. I'm currently a tuffmail subscriber but I really want gmail with a clone of their android app, just in exchange for money and a strong privacy policy.
Hmmm- there is perhaps some merit to your theory but I doubt its as easy buying an MLS subscription and flipping homes.

Some of what you are saying is applicable to Advertising as well. See Chris Dixon's posts on why Google is so profitable because its closest to the transaction.

http://cdixon.org/2010/02/19/a-massive-misallocation-of-onli...

http://cdixon.org/2009/09/29/why-content-sites-are-getting-r...

===From Chris Dixon's Posts===

For example, an average camera buyer takes 30 days and clicks on approximately 3 sponsored links from the beginning of researching cameras to actually purchasing one. Yet in most cases only the last click gets credit, by which I mean: 1) if it’s an affiliate (CPA) deal, it is literally usually the case that only the last affiliate (the site that drops the last cookie) gets paid, 2) if it’s a CPC or CPM deal, most advertisers don’t properly track the users across multiple site visits so simply attribute conversion to the most recent click, causing them to over-allocate to end-of-funnel links 3) if it’s a non-sponsored link (like Google natural search links) the advertiser might over-credit SEO when in fact the natural search click was just the final navigational step in a long process that involved sponsored links along the way.

What this means is there are two huge misallocations of advertising dollars online: the first from intent generators to intent harvesters; the second from intent harvesters that are at the beginning or middle of the purchasing process to those at the end of the purchasing process. This is not just a problem for internet advertisers and businesses – it affects all internet users. Where advertising dollars flow, money gets invested. It is well known that content sites are suffering, many are even on their way to dying. Additionally, product/service sites that started off focusing on research are forced to move more and more toward end-of-funnel activities.
Could Reddit have been as big of a success as Facebook?
Reddit has certainly made a massive impact on the online community, but perhaps it could have many times bigger. Is is possible that they could have gotten to a IPO, with a market cap of tens of billions of dollars? Specifically, were things like the Reddit Marketplace a short sighted way to monetize the site and the expense of growth? It seems like this is something Facebook would have vehemently opposed to.
There's a fairly well established alternate format (active format) for recipes that addresses the concern you identify, which is pretty similar to your format but with the action for each step ahead of the steps ingredients; is also fairly common for standard format recipes to break into seperate pieces based on where separating prep makes sense.

I'm think of you aren't breaking on natural prep separations but just on traditional recipe steps, then the action-first approach of the active format is superior (since awareness of the actions is essential to planning prep), but for people with less kitchen experience (or that want to spend less effort analyze the recipe before executing) the standard format--possibly with explicit prep separations--is the best way to go. Failing to prep before starting execution is a common source of failure, and while separating pero can work, doing prep one action at a time rarely works well.
I have one and highly recommend it. The distro is actually Debian-based and is mostly an open source fork of Vyatta but has some proprietary bits for the Cavium offload.
>Wouldn't be the first time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

Thanks for reminding folks about the Bonus Army. This was a sad day in U.S. history.

But remember the Bonus Army did not revolt. It was, I believe, a peaceful protest. The firepower came from the other side, when Hoover and MacArthur decided to send in the regular army (so much for the First Amendment right to petition the government for a redress of grievances). I wonder how U.S. history would have turned out differently if the Bonus Army veterans actually had been armed and defended themselves against troops that were attacking them and their families with bayonets...

Nowadays, especially after the Gun Control Act of 1968 and additional restrictions under Bush 1.0, the the disparity in armament between civilian vs. military is a bit greater.
Let a thousand flowers wilt!

Consider this statement from the lead author:

"As economies develop, one language often comes to dominate a nation’s political and educational spheres. People are forced to adopt the dominant language or risked being left out in the cold – economically and politically."

Another way of putting that would be:

"People learn foreign languages so they can communicate with a greater number of people", which does not have quite the same potential for moral panic as the original.

The paper still appears to be embargoed, but the authors have not made much of a case for why linguistic diversity per se is important. Not nearly enough to support their moral claim that states should take efforts to encourage people to speak languages that they themselves have decided not to speak.
Income distribution of New York City: What does it take to be rich?
Let's be technically accurate. They put a data center in Utah, and a matching data center in San Antonio that most people forget about, because those are nearly ideal places to locate data centers that are survivable and efficient for their purposes. That it is in desert is only somewhat related.

Unlike the NSA headquarters location, the data center sites are in locales with low exposure to geological and other risks, both sites sit on major fiber aggregation points, and power is inexpensive. Frankly, it makes pragmatic sense to put them there.

It isn't that different than Facebook putting a huge data center in the Oregon high desert. It may be far from civilization but from a data center economics standpoint it makes perfect sense. One of the curiosities of the western high deserts is that there are several industries where that environment is conducive to efficient and economical facilities. Data centers are one of those use cases.

Criticism of use cases aside, I would hope that the government would build sensible and economically efficient data centers. If I was building a massive scale data center, I would probably locate similarly.
Show HN: Rakable – Share links privately
This is the first startup that I am launching and the idea behind it is that there is a dearth of place on the web to share link privately with friends and family, and one often resorts to various communication channels like email, facebook or watsapp. Rakable aims to provide a centralized place for all your links.

Future releases will include ability to create groups, attach files etc.

Tell me what you think of Rakable. Will greatly appreciate any feedback!
Not sure how one can confirm the photo is actually real, it's so easy to fabricate picture nowadays and to add noise to make it seem like it belongs to the original. It's be interesting to actually have an in-depth article on the methods to detect fake pictures, I have seen a couple on HN but they only focused on a few examples.
If you have 30 minutes: Steve Yegge's "Emergency Elisp". http://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/emergency-elisp.ht...

If you have 6 months: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (highly recommended, I enjoyed it a great deal). http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

Emacs-specific tutorial on using the built-in help and the elisp packages' source code when you need to figure out how to do a particular customisation: http://david.rothlis.net/emacs/customize_c.html
What you need to know about Twitch
couldn't they just open another dealership right next to the old one?
Some criticism about Pascal is kind of unfair, the one-pass compiler nature of the original language for example made Pascal compilers so much faster.

When I tried to learn how to program I had played around with C, C++ and Basic without understanding much, but when I finally found a Pascal book and got a copy of FreePascal I really learned and understood how it works.

Nowadays I am not using Pascal any more (I am not too sad about it), but the Borland / FreePascal Dialects offer some serious benefits. For one thing the unit system is still better than what C/C++ have to offer (text-include header files, nah) ;)

Also it is worth remembering that C back then was not what it became with ANSI C and then C99. I would not like to write in that dialect, seriously.

Thinking back I think Pascal was a nice intermediate level programming language between C and Basic that was implemented in its ways for proper reasons. The text provided has very valid points on Pascal, but the arguments that C is better are only partially convincing. C is different and I would argue that it has prevailed because it is more closer to the metal.
I was intrigued at first especially after reading the comparison with Cisco and Juniper gear and seeing that the Ubiquiti was out performing them. But when I read up on the forums I noticed that as soon as you enable any interesting advanced features the performance will drop because hardware offloading is disabled. A couple of examples: a modify firewall rule, load-balancing, netflow, QoS and probably many more.

For a couple of end user benchmarks: http://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeMAX/kernel-compilation/td-p...
The difference between Rocket Internet and Y Combinator
This looks awesome! Not really usable yet due to the lack of browser support[0] (Chrome 37+ and Safari 8 with -webkit-), but it's this kind of thing that rallies support for web standards.

[0] http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-shapes
For me, the fact that I couldn't use Google Charts offline was the end of the road of "testing" GC. I needed to make an intranet web app that would not be "allowed to communicate with the exterior".
I love that people are developing early tools for these things, but it looks like this won't be usable for mainstream websites for years.
You can do that with Bash (albeit not with line numbers).

But as I said before, there were other languages available for said machines and those had their editors as well. What you're describing isn't a unique attribute to BASIC.
NASA's Ames Research Center 75th Anniversary Open House
Turning off the Uber Meter
I grabbed an uber last Weekend from SF to the Valley. The driver offered to turn off the meter and charge less (there was a surge) if I paid in cash or by card. I couldn't figure out if that was illegal, immoral or part of the trade. I didn't do it. Anyone know the ethics of that?
Time travel urban legends
That was surreal to read, actually.
Hacking Apple's HomeKit
The more tightly you control copies of your password DB file, the less vulnerable you are if somebody "purposefully injected a vulnerability" in the software as parent suggests, that's the only reason I brought it up.
How Bitcoin Actually Works (Computers for Cynics #7)
The article resonated with me when it mentioned "(or, because they suspect no one will invest in what they really want to do)."

>Many problems have an 80% software solution attached to a 20% "interface with the real world" mandatory bit.

My "Big Problem" is Education. I'd almost flip those numbers -- 20% software, 80% "interface with the real world." Throw in non-trivial entrenched interests including existing teachers who think they know the best way to teach, and a significant fraction of people in this country who went through a public school education and who might be prone to object to teaching kids in a new and different way.

But I still want to try. I think that it's a problem that will actually address many of the "unexotic big problems" plaguing the world today.

The big fix is for the poor. Get education right and you can make strides against poverty from multiple directions. The educated adults you produce will be more able to be employed, or to create employment opportunities (depending on temperament and opportunity). That would help single mothers and the rest -- eventually.
Funny how things change. Two of the deficiencies:

- the absence of global state
- array dimensions part of the type

may have been considered defects back then,
but are currently seen as a good thing.

[For example, in Haskell, they consider it fancy that you can add dimensions to your type signature so the compiler can check if you're not doing something silly.]

Also, I programmed extensively in Pascal using the Borland IDE in the early 90s and it was one of the best IDEs I ever encountered.

As troll bait, let me just throw in this: the compiler had better inline assembly than what gcc provides 20 years down the road.
The location in Utah is between the state's two largest population centers. That picture looks back into a live-ammunition range for the Army reserves and up into mountains that are pretty much owned by a mining company (so no developments), but that doesn't reflect the reality around it. The location wasn't chosen for the space (sure, it's big, but there is a lot of federal ground around the US); it was chosen because of cheap, plentiful electricity and good connectivity to the Internet.

If it's any consolation, there have been efforts underway to get the water rights for the NSA's Utah DC revoked[1]. Personally, I think it is deplorable that they built a data center that will use nearly two million gallons of water a day in one of the driest places in the US. It irks me every time I look across the valley and see it.

1. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/12/utah-lawmaker-n...

2. http://fox13now.com/2014/04/25/bluffdale-releases-water-bill...
I'm sorry I cannot give a better cite than this, but sometime in the last 20 years there was a terrific short story, probably in Analog (but possibly in Asimov's) about the first time traveller.

His first shock was when he found that the person in the past they selected to visit, Shakespeare, did not seem at all surprised when visited by a time traveller. In fact, he seemed to find it routine. The traveler at one point says he doesn't understand how Shakespeare can already know about time travelers, since he is the first. Shakespeare tells him that he may have been the first to leave, but he wasn't the first to arrive.

Shortly after, many time travelers arrive...but not to see Shakespeare. They are reporters, from all throughout the timeline, coming to try to interview the first time traveller, and Shakespeare, an old hand at dealing with time travelers, steps in to protect the first time traveller and prevent him from being overwhelmed.
Made me remember the quote by Reinhold Niebuhr: "Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure."
This point was cited in a recent article I think debated here (or Reddit), "This is why you never end up hiring good developers." You push away a lot of talent when you select for some narrow culture fit, or mandate that they be your friend too.

IMO, the obsession with culture fit and team bonding is really just a way to trick engineers into devoting more of their life, mindshare, and personal freedom to laboring for your startup.
Practical Common Lisp: http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
As far as I know, generally speaking doing things yourself, is what makes learn how to do them.

So if you don't play with firewall rules, block yourself a couple of times, do something stupid you'll never learn.

I could argue that doing copy-paste firewall rules from the internet might not be a good thing. Will give you the idea of security while there might be none.
The "fixing email" / "email is broken" are quotes you only hear from startup guys and UX geeks. Email is indeed working really well. Most people outside of this niche seems to have no fundamental problems with it.

Just an example: I recently needed to send a script to an 8 year old kid and a grandma at around 75. Couldn't have done it any other way than email. The point being that email is an enormously broad platform.

Its so broad that the second you turn to mobile to solve email, you have limited your way out the competition.
MySQL is like PHP, its installed almost everywhere, and requires less set up. I did have one problem recently where MySQL turned out to be a better solution, as it has a native bitcount operation, and a larger set of numerical types.
The press release from Kinnevik announcing the plans can be found right here: http://hugin.info/1114/R/1853369/647977.pdf

Interesting to see how ~41% of all visits to Zalando are from mobile devices in Q2 2014. [1]
DACH still accounts for a significant share (56.8%) of the total revenue in Q2 2014. [2]

Zalando's ownership looked like this after Rocket Internet technically exited last year: [3]
- Investment AB Kinnevik: 37%
- European Founders Fund: 18%
- Anders Holch Povlsen: 10%
- DST Global: 9%
- Holtzbrinck Ventures: 8%
- Tengelmann Ventures: 6%
- Others: 12%

[1]: p7 https://corporate.zalando.com/system/files/zalando_financial...
[2]: p8 https://corporate.zalando.com/system/files/zalando_financial...
[3]: http://techmoran.com/rocket-internet-exits-zalando/