skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This "serious watch lovers won't go for this" is debatable. I'm one.

He compares the Patek Philippe 3940G, along with a photograph. I have and used to wear the rarer top model of that series, with several more complications and digits in the price. I love and collect complication watches. I hate digital watches -- I've kept only one in 25 years.

Since getting the Pebble Steel with leather band (preordered and meant to cancel when I decided I wouldn't use it), I haven't worn the Patek or any of the other mechanicals during my business day.

The moment to moment difference liberating me from "devices" during my business day is too valuable. I don't love it. But it changes my day.

Given your comment, it's an interesting contrast: I no longer wear any other watch besides the Pebble Steel because I hate interruptions even more than I love mechanical watches. The Pebble's soft vibration and glance-ability is so much less intrusive than checking a device, I'm unwilling to trade it.

Couple the manufacturing detail described here with the benefit to the flow of one's day, and I'd argue the Apple Watch is the first digital likely to appeal to mechanical watch lovers in highly connected jobs.
Depends on the method. Gene guns work best with embryonic tissue, which is found in the seeds. The Agrobacteria method can use just about any tissue, but doesn't work for all plants.

That article talks about them applying for clinical trials, but I'm pretty sure they don't have the carotene transformed banana plant yet (unless it's unpublished).
At the time Nokia already had a pile of money.

The N9 was highly anticipated, and IMO, a resounding success. But the fact Stephen Elop said it would be the first, last, and only Meego device made it DOA. And of course, the Windows phones weren't well received...
> At the time there wash't much of one, and likely Apple had trouble convincing companies like Sony et. al. that they should make them.

What?? The Bose SoundDock was product of the year in 2004 -- 2 years before the iPod HiFi came out. Apple was behind the times and completely missed the mark with the HiFi.
This site has a lot of info about ripeness and growing bananas in general. It is practically obligatory when banana-related articles come up.

http://webebananas.com/culture.html

>Maturity and ripeness are two different things. Mature bananas may be picked green and will ripen off of the tree. This is how all commercial bananas which you purchase in the supermarket are done. Immature bananas will not ripen properly. Hanging time on the tree, to achieve maturity is different for each variety. I have ripened Kru fruit after only 6 weeks hanging time. However, my first bunch of Saba fruit required 11 months on the tree before ripening.

>Color change is evidence of ripening. Different varieties have different shades of yellow when ripe. Once again, becoming familiar with your particular variety is crucial.

>Knowing when to pick your bananas is the final step in enjoying your harvest. I approach each new variety this way: when the first hand (not the flower) appears, (this is the most important step) I write the date on the side of the stalk with a felt pen. After 6 months, if they have not shown any color change, I cut off the top (oldest) hand, and allow it to ripen (usually in a couple weeks). If it is OK, I continue removing hands as I need them. Eventually the rest will ripen on the “tree”.
Except it was 2 years after Bose had introduced the SoundDock.
Is that the only thing you are getting out of the discussion?
define "thriving" because I find this hard to believe.
I far prefer the taste of green bananas. I hate overly-sweet ripe bananas...
I have no problem "showing what I've got", so to speak. But I fear this practice is really just a tactic to strip software employees of leverage at the negotiating table. After going through weeks or months of trial by fire, making some friends in the trenches, and stopping the machinery of their larger job search, who is still willing to walk away from a lowish offer and begin that whole process again? It's the rational thing because there is plenty of opportunity out there, but emotionally it is a tough pill to swallow.

I'm in the middle of a three month contract to hire right now at a smallish startup. I go back and forth on whether I think it's a good idea (weeds out would be coworkers who don't perform) or bad for reasons laid out above. I was seeing a ton of interest when actively interviewing at companies and probably would not have agreed to this except that my current employer has long been on my dream job list. Emotionally it's tough to deal with being a temp, even as other (cheaper, non developer) employees are hired full time without a trial period. So far I'm sticking it out and doing well, but when I have doubts I feel like maybe starting down this path was a sucker's move.
Haha, I was about to PM you and then realized that there aren't PMs on HN :) I always like to talk about this stuff though, if you want you can email me at zwegner@gmail.com.

What you describe is somewhat similar to what I had in mind, but a more well-defined abstraction. I hadn't yet formulated it in terms of types, because for now it's just a hack in the bootstrap interpreter, and anyways a lot of Mutagen's type system is still in my head, waiting to be implemented once I have a better understanding of how/why other functional languages do this stuff.
Whoops, you're right! I think I missed part of that exchange the first time.

If I take your statement out of context my reply sort-of makes sense but now I see that it doesn't really.
By most accepted definitions, racism is the belief that one or more race is inherently better or worse in some regard.

What if that belief were true? Would it still be racist?

Concretely (since a reply brings up biology): I believe African women are "better" (taller, have larger asses, and less body hair) than White/Asian women. I believe these differences are primarily biological, likely genetic, in origin.

I do discriminate on the basis of traits correlated with race - I am more attracted to tall, dark women with larger asses. I've dated more women from Africa in the past 6 months than from any other continent.

Am I racist?

(Note: I'm not African, nor will I be offended if you call me racist, so don't hold back. I'm simply attempting to understand the viewpoint expressed.)
Aliexpress is overflowing with Android devices with multi-band cell radios. Some of them even dual-SIMs.
A watch is only to tell time. A phone is only to talk. Neither of these require a size bigger than "barely able to see easily. However smartphones have incorporated 'web browsing' (and analogues) into them, and they do have a size requirement that they can't get smaller than. The market has spoken, and all the vendors are bringing out larger phones with bigger screens. That functionality isn't something that can fit onto a wrist; not until we have sci-fi style holographic projectors, anyway.
Source for that? I always wondered why artificial banana flavour was so far off from that of the real fruit.
Scientific American was beating this drum a while ago:

> It's Time to End the War on Salt
> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-th...
I've cycled for fun a little bit, but I have cycled to get to work a lot, both in cities and rural areas. I don't really think of my bike in terms of going to visit trails, it is purely a means of getting around that I also can take on a train. This is in the UK, a lot of it in London, which is an exciting place to cycle and you do generally have to work on the assumption that everybody is trying to kill you, though per mile, walking is more dangerous.

Also, as far as cycling in London traffic goes, most of the time it is the cars holding me up, as a bike is quicker than the average speed of traffic. If I am holding up a line of cars, I will cut in behind a parked car and let them pass, is far more dangerous for me to have a load of stressed drivers queuing up.

One thing, roads are dangerous places. I know this and have had it drilled into me since I was a kid, but given this is the UK the advice is not to stay out of the road, but how to be in the road safely, whether you are a pedestrian, car or cyclist. Stuff like always walking on the side facing into traffic when on country roads and what to do around horses.

You might think this attitude is woefully dangerous, but I prefer it to a society where I could be get arrested for jaywalking.
> If you take in 500 calories per day and burn 1600, that will fit the "energy burned needs to be >= energy taken in" rule, but you'll still die.

In most developed nations (which, admittedly I assume HN is largely composed of), people have problems with overconsumption as opposed to underconsumption. You're right though, your ideal scenario is energy burned === energy taken in an appropriate weight range for your height and muscular stature.

> Even that basic question is more complicated than you're making it out to be.

It's really, really not.

> I feel like you're trying to grind some axe relating to weight loss here, but in doing so you are obviously oversimplifying the field of nutrition.

I'll repeat what I said in another comment: Maintaining a healthy weight is (or should be, at least) the primary concern of the vast majority of people concerned with their personal nutrition.
I decided to go through the IOMs Sodium Intake in Populations report[1] when the FDAs new DRIs were released. The FDA guidelines pushing for 1500mg a day stand in contrast to the findings of the Cochrane review meta-analysis(summary[2]). After looking over all the studies reviewed by both the IOM and the Cochrane review I can't figure out how the FDA are justifying their recommendations of very low intake. The only truly consistent finding seems to be that below around 2g and above about 4g is clearly harmful in that it definitely results in more hospital visits. In between is a lot more shaky. The FDA basically asked the IOM to write the bottom line first and still the IOM wasn't able to come up with any evidence that lowering sodium intake below that range was helpful. It is important to note that the vast majority of sodium studies additionally do not control for a very important confounder which is potassium intake, and that those that do seem to agree strongly with the conclusions of the Cochrane Review. IOM makes note of this shortcoming but does not draw any conclusions from it.

MealSquares (http://mealsquares.com) will be sticking with the Cochrane Review conclusions for now, but of course we will update and inform our customers based on the recommendations with the strongest evidence behind them. It's interesting to note that Soylent 1.0 went with around 1g of salt/day and was forced to change this when people started getting dizzy. it will be interesting to see what they change it to.

1. http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=18311&page=R1

2. http://www.nhs.uk/news/2011/11November/Pages/cochrane-review...
Only if you hold it to be due to biological differences rather than cultural.

Edit: You must also use it as a justification for discrimination.
Black men are the least racist people.
I'm not a serious watch lover, but I imagine members of that group have larger collections than your typical microcomputer lover or smartphone lover, and place a high value on finding one that's different from any they already have.
I'll bet 5 bucks with someone here that it will flop (as in, won't become a regular product). My reasons for winning the bet:

-Although it looks great, it doesn't look like a great watch, it just looks like a beautiful Apple product. The thing is, on this specific product, as opposed to all their other products, Apple is competing with an established design lineage that goes back for decades, and wristwatches have always been about good taste and good design, so the competition on the aesthetics front is not so easy for Apple as it was on their other products (meaning computer hardware/software makers suck tremendously in regards to design, but watchmakers are champions of it).

-Extending on previous reason: it's as if Apple decided to go the eyeglass route and take on Google. Easy, because Glass is downright ugly and too geeky. So Apple makes its own beautiful glass, which is still a little geeky, and then they have to compete with Ray-Ban, Gucci, Prada, wathever.

-Short battery life sucks for a wristwatch.

-People already have the functionality on the iPhone, and the iPhone is already pretty portable.

-Short battery life sucks a lot for a wristwatch, come to think of it.

edit: formatting.
It reminds me of this paper (look at the chart in page 2): "Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange?" http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/htm/cul...
That is disgusting, it's not even native (not that you'd want it to be), not to mention that NPM is the most unreliable package manager out there.
Ummm, you shouldn't be looking at GPS while driving. It's easy enough to tether a smartphone to your car's console. I know on my last 3 phones (all Android) the GPS would actually interrupt the music when I was coming up on a turn, then return to the music.

As for music remote control, headphones generally have controls somewhere on them or the cord so you don't need to take your phone out.
Germanene: European scientists synthesize new cousin of graphene
Wow, very powerful article. I agree that our prison system is America's biggest moral wrong, and I hope that history books in 50 years write about how sad and unjust it is in our time.

That said, does anyone know what proposed solutions are? When the author talks of abolishing the prison system in exchange for higher crime rates (and potentially even more deaths by the state), does he literally mean we should close all prisons (like he seems to say near the end)? I'd love to see more articles / writing about this, and proposed solutions with specifics about how many people could be removed from the prison system, estimates for increases in capital punishment (if arguing we should have more), etc.
that's a good point - curious as to what could possibly explain the drop in white/white ratings though.
Yes, generally the solution is the two things you identify: 1) there is an extensive bicycle network, separated as much as possible from the vehicular lanes; and 2) cycling is something a broad cross-section of the population does, on said network. In that case it would be both stupid and probably illegal to bike in the car lanes, and there is also no real "cyclist" identity. That is also how it is here (Copenhagen).

In almost all parts of the U.S., the law and infrastructure cuts the other way, though. There is no separate bike infrastructure [1], and bicycles are legally treated as vehicles. In that context, it doesn't seem that surprising to me that the fewer people who still dare ride a bike demand to be treated as the (poorly designed) legal framework envisions they should be.

[1] I'd love a good source to verify this comparison (I heard it in a talk), but something I recently heard quoted is: Greater Copenhagen (1.5m people) has more km of protected bicycle infrastructure (~1000km) than the entire United States added together does (~400km).
Oh well, at least your comment is interesting even if out of place.
It would be nice for completeness, if either start or end is an airport (e.g. "SFO", "LAX") to include an estimate of a shared-ride van such as supershuttle.
That's pretty awful and I can see how it might affect your views on cyclists. I would want to punch those guys myself.

I had the good fortune to start cycling seriously with a university club where the coach was really strict about safe riding being a pre-requisite to participation and as such I don't do the kinds of things you're talking about. In fact most of the cyclists I know don't do that stuff either.

But just because I'm not exposed to a bunch of jackasses doesn't mean they don't exist.

I think your support of separate spaces for separate uses is admirable given the bad experiences you've had.
This article is just falling over itself to praeise the Apple Watch.

The Apple Watch doesn't look particularly sleek or modern, instead it looks like someone shrunk the iPhone 3GS and put a strap on it.

The author picks up random watches that do not look nice as a comparision for the Apple Watch, but ignores watches in roughly the same price range that do look better?

For instance, look at [1] or [2], both are from Tissot, both look elegant and classy, and both are the same price as the Apple Watch.

The article obssesses over Apple's decision making regarding straps, but uses really, really biased sounding words. For instance:

> The fact that Apple even knows what this is is remarkable. I promise you not a single other tech company in the world would've spent the time to make this admittedly outdated looking option. But I absolutely love it.

Anybody who visits a watch store will find watches with that sort of strap a dime a dozen.

Further evidence of Apple fanboyism can be found later on in the article, when the author states that the new iPhone 6, which is not available for use yet, as "the absolute best offering in the category in both form and function".

I am not implying that liking Apple products makes one a fanboy (I own and really like my MBPr), but this article isn't of any really journalistic standard, and yet has reached the top of HN.
You sincerely think that most cyclists in NYC make more than even the average HN reader? You must tip really well! ;)

Stay in that bubble, and tell me more about the rich and entitled bicyclists that slow down your Uber.
You are talking about tech for its own sake. The target market for this segment is vanishingly small.

But to address your point more directly. Do you already know how to make a wearable device of a similar size that offers all these features without having to recharge once a day, by "early 2015"? If you do, then I'm very sure you can find employment at Apple or one of its competitors.
I am generalizing for the people who don't have families because they see Germany being handed over to foreigners in the future. You do not agree with my opinion? That is fine.

But it is not xenophobic to say that people want to keep German families German. Did you know that China has less than a million immigrants in the entire country? Maybe it is time you respect your people, too. Your group of 4 sounds like some xenophile party.

With this article we have the sexual relations of Germans strewn about and we are expected to just sit back and let the whole world morph the demographics of a nation they aren't a part of. I don't agree with it.
I believe that training methods for recursive neural networks will be some of the most interesting future research in the field. We've seen some pretty revolutionary techniques come out for feedforward models in the last 30 years, but with recurrent/recursive networks it's often difficult to see what's going on inside the network, let alone properly train it. We've already seen what Deep RNNs can do when trained [1], but I think this is only the beginning.

[1] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1303.5778.pdf
I'm amazed to note that black women face negative scores from men of all races, including their own! That sounds really disturbing, at least to a non-American.
Regarding that Slate article:

> In a somewhat similar vein, one of OkCupid’s questions reads as follows: “Would you strongly prefer to go out with someone of your own skin color/racial background?” I was struck by the not inconsiderable number of people who answered “yes”—including some people I know “in real life,” many of whom are hilariously self-righteous about their enlightened political views.

I don't see why that's surprising. Marriage stats in the U.S. still show that people (even minorities) generally marry those of the same race. Is it really surprising that people have a higher preference to connect with those with a similar culture and appearance?
Well, with FirefoxOS, you don't have Android's Dalvik nonesense nor iOS's restrictive marketplace. They needed some userland language, since the isolation keeps security high. These mobile computers aren't used in a security conscious way, and many developers are unscrupulous in the environments. Give them the power to install rootkits, and they will.
That seems ridiculously low for any software job. I've known design interns making almost double that in SF.
> with no skin in the game

I took that as referring to field expertise. If that wasn't the intent, my mistake.

I get what you're saying, but there isn't video documentation of everything, so at some point you take the words and recollections of others.
True true, but remember if you are willing to assume sparsity and use reconstruction algorithms, there are by now well-established ways to get around Shannon-Nyquist with high probability (ie the whole compressed sensing stuff). Just sayin'...
Here's one angle. If this app becomes popular and Uber sends a C&D, then Uber results will no longer show up in this app, meaning Lyft would get all the bookings from people who use it.
Doesn't Google Maps include Uber now? I thought gMaps also had public transportation information as well. inb4 selective enforcement.
I wonder what should happen if the driver is severely allergic to dogs? How would this be resolved?
No, you keep making the same two mistakes.

1) You don't actually know what the law is. You've cherry picked laws that allow bikes to share roads without having even a breath's familiarity with the responsibilities that also come with road usage and the laws that lay out those responsibilities.

2) You equate "being legal" with "being wise". It's perfectly legal for me to go on a diet of all broken glass. But it's a stupid idea. It's perfectly legal, and even specifically enshrined in law for me to go grocery shopping with a loaded shotgun and a backpack full of dynamite, but it's also idiotic.

I think to save cyclists from themselves they should have protected, dedicated bikeways that are not meant for pedestrians or cars but bikes and transportation devices of similar speed and weight (roller skates to Segways). I think that this is a fantastic idea and should be the norm everywhere. I'm not retarded, a psychopath, or ignorant of what the law says. But I do have to share the road with cyclists who are and to save them from themselves I wholly support the above engineering and planning ideas and would even be willing to sacrifice my own income to make this a reality in the form of higher, purpose designated taxes.

If you have a problem with my attitude fine, but you're doing absolutely nothing to dissuade me from my preconceived notions that the community of cyclists I deal with every week is made up mostly of entitled assholes with a death wish.

Anybody who looks at a 40+ mph undivided two lane road with poor visibility and double yellow no passing lane markings and says "I'm going ride my bike there" is perfectly legal to do so. But they're also idiotic morons.

And when they complain that that journey wasn't safe, not because there isn't a good bike lane, but because of all the cars on that purpose built automotive surface driving exactly as they were supposed to, they can go fuck themselves. Because I'm not responsible for their stupidity.