skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've been working on a derivative parser for PEGs; it's not quite working yet, but the inherent lack of ambiguity in PEGs is helpful to the time bounds there (I think I can make it worst case cubic, and linear in a lot of common cases). I've got some ideas how to modify the algorithm to a better derivative parser for CFGs; I should be able to recognize arbitrary CFGs in linear time, and I think parse them in cubic (carrying around the set of current parse tree options is expensive, but I think if you store them as a DAG of parsing paths rather than a parse tree you can make it tolerable).
>"economists (particularly of the capitalist variety) certainly have a point of view that the economic utility function can be directly transformed into and represented by monetary value"

Which economists have that point of view? Some have accused Smith of this, but it is plainly untrue, as made clear in his "Theory of Moral Sentiments".[1] Austrian economists such as Mises (who few would call socialist) criticized even the cardinal utility model, and argued that only lists of ordinal utilities are useful.[2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Moral_Sentiments

[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Money_and_Credit
At some point back then it would've been clear it was viable. We're obviously not anywhere near that point yet, and there are likely other better ways. We don't yet have full dictatorship, which makes the difference. For example, it would likely take less energy to gain vote ranking (or other way to make third parties viable) by protesting and striking than by revolution. If the protesters and strikers are mowed down by bullets or tanks, then you need revolution.
Well, I wasn't saying it was moot, even if you were assigning responsibility to the USG! I was just pointing out that it was the implication of dragonwriter's comment with regard to potential USG involvement.

So, rather than haggling with dragownwriter over that bit, I went on to point out that I don't believe the USG would be constrained by it for different reasons than the outright impunity he suggested; that is, that they would find legal justification for it.

But, I do see that I may have misconstrued your comment by over-focus on the USG involvement bit. My bad.
> Isn't owning typically cheaper than renting?

Depends how you account for all factors. Owning usually comes with some hassle and risk. Renting means you pay someone else to discharge those duties. Another factor is the cost of capital for you vs the company that would rent to you.

Having your own lawnmower probably has something to do with transaction costs. Ie it's a hassle to coordinate among people.
but it's important to point out that these things are relative.

This and the CIA never crucified, amputated, or executed men on film for progoganda...which is what we look at now on the news every other week.

Not to mention CIA's lethal drone program (incl. under Obama) has killed, maimed, and injured more innocent men/women/children than the EIA stuff.
Great job guys! Things like this together with CalDAV and CardDAV are reasons why I pay you guys for service.

I just tried the following experiments with my Gmail and FastMail account. There's a reason why FastMail just feels faster!

Try this:
1) While having the Gmail iOS app open, mark an email as read on the web
2) See how long it takes for Gmail to reflect the change
3) Now try with FastMail iOS app, see that it's faster

Try this too:
1) While having the Gmail iOS app open, delete an email on the web
2) See that Gmail app never updates until you manually refresh
3) Now try with FastMail iOS app, see that it happens instantly

How about the other direction?
1) Read an email on your phone
2) See that Gmail on the web never updates until manual refresh
3) Now try with FastMail... Instant update!
Edit: Fine, too rambly. Short version.

Google Now or Siri are killing the page as a medium for certain types of content, and I would not be surprised if the info providers transition to an API-first model where the primary target is layout-agnostic and possibly supported by micropayments.
But then you'd be able to reduce things down to a relatively short writing curriculum. Many university courses involve writing, but they are not primarily designed to improve students writing.

Some universities force students who are behind in writing to take courses to catch up before they can even enroll in the normal liberal arts classes. You have to be decent at writing before they'll even let you read Foucalt.
How would that differ from embassies?
Do they really have driverless cars or
just cars that run on essentially
electronic tracks very carefully
determined?

If someone moves the location of a traffic
light, can a Google car still find the
traffic light? Wbat if a bulb in the
traffic light is burned out; is the
car smart enough to negotiate the intersection
with the failed light? What if a bucket
of white paint fell on the road yesterday;
is the Google car's image processing good
enough to recognize this or to tell the
difference between wet paint and dry?

Heck, when I drive, there is a lot for me
to watch and analyze. A Google car
can do that?
I'm using Prosody. Supports TLS1.2 and Forward Secrecy.

Check your score on xmpp.net if you haven't already. ;)
Tools and Resources Every Mobile App Developer Should Know About
For a fun (fictional) take about life on Mars, I'd recommend reading The Martian by Andy Weir ( amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/The-Martian-Novel-Andy-Weir-ebook/dp/B... ). The book was a wild read, and does a tremendous job showing the myriad difficulties humanity must overcome in order to colonize Mars.
A website meant to be usable is a bit different from one meant to be a portfolio. From that perspective, I think his website works well, but it is a bit dated in terms of aesthetics (not as flat as the current fashion goes).

I don't think Bret Victor's work is really about design (most of the UX designers I know have never heard of him), it is about invention and is a bit more on the programmer side. Putting him in the designer bucket is too inaccurate (but buckets are always inaccurate).

I saw this talk in person at SPLASH; the puppy in cage for life really pulls at some heart strings. But it didn't really do it for me like the previous talks did (though he didn't have any prototypes to show off as with the previous talks).
Surge pricing also limits demand. And that's a good thing; it's better if there's an expensive spot available, than no cheap spots.
For the well acquainted -- how does this relate to Inbox (https://www.inboxapp.com/)? I have not spent enough time with either to make a comparison
Are the projects you work on business glue written in a high-level language and accompanied by tests?

At the places/projects that have these policies, (and whenever possible) software won't (or shouldn't) be rocket surgery.
The district would be subservient to the state for taxes, lease contracts etc. but it's entirely possible to treat the individual buildings as "sovereign territory of the District of Columbia" just like how the little townhouse in London is Ecuadorian territory, and thousands of other embassies around the world like it.

Once you walked off the sidewalk, or off the third floor elevators, or through that door, etc, you would be on "federal turf" so to speak. It's not about a geographical circle.
A substantial volume of low-level fraud occurs every day and is baked into the cost of doing business because that costs less than reengineering fundamentally insecure systems.

A system where you can pull money by knowing a set of "secret" numbers shared with every entity an account holder has ever done business with is just insane to begin with.

We rely on reading transactions after the fact looking for red flags. You can beat the filters sometimes by running millions of credit cards. You can't really expect to move $100 billion from an investment bank to your checking account without anyone noticing and using their central authority to reverse the transaction.
Wrap your gifts in HTML and CSS this Xmas
That's back when they tried to be like Apple.
How is this different from adding an address to your blacklist after the first message?
Ember: innovating. Angular: masturbating.
I never downvote. I don't believe in it. I believe downvoting promotes echo chambers and group think. Should there be an alternative? Perhaps, and it would be "flag with a reason", in other words, choose from a list of common reasons why something should be flagged (like reporting posts on Facebook and other social networks). Anything flagged sufficiently would be investigated; until an admin determines that a post is abuse, it might remain (cannot decide clearly about this). Excessive false flagging would result in the flagger being dinged on karma. And losing the ability to flag. (Another would be to allow one flag per 100 karma points or some such thing.) We know from behavioural psychology that punishment rarely works, that rewarding desirable behaviour is far more effective. Why do we, a supposedly intelligent crowd guided by facts and well established science, behave like schoolyard bullies, shouting down the voices of others?

I upvote anything that piques my interest, intrigues me, expresses well what I thought myself, expresses well a thought completely counter to mine (which often means it is the first two things listed as well), and I often upvote downvoted items; the first paragraph implies why.
Good article, and it was nice to see the journalist take the high road by not fixating on (or even mentioning) Buzz's altercation with the conspiracy nutcase outside his hotel. It's also a pretty depressing read. As the article suggests, it seems likely that NASA made the right call by putting Armstrong in the #1 position, because being #1 would likely have destroyed Buzz.

All I'd have to say to Buzz Aldrin or anyone else from the Apollo program is, "Sorry we dropped the ball you handed us."
Brain fart on my part, I was thinking about a different comment.

I meant that it isn't consistent with people's observed preferences being transitive; if they are, then there is no need to make the inferences you suggest. But of course you were talking about things that can't be traded for money, not things that people refuse to because they value them more, so ignore my criticism.

Actually, that makes me realize that I need to change the edge criterion in my previous comment.
Hmm, looking at that, I'd say it more proves my point. At the top of their Wikipedia entry[0], it says that JPMorgan Chase has roughly 2.5 TRILLION in assets. According to this[1] site, 1.29 TRILLION in customer deposits. Hackers believed to be from Russia breached some of their systems and stole... drumroll please... customer names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. There's stuff in there of value comparable to national economies, a mind-boggling amount of money, and they didn't get a penny of it. All they got was a glorified phone book.

Apple can't seem to protect their Apple IDs or iCloud data from determined attackers. Amazon and GoDaddy have given over total control of user's accounts to pretty simple social engineering attacks, both giving the attackers the keys to the castle. None of these attackers seem to have much in the way of funding or organization, and the stolen data doesn't seem to monetize terribly well. Do you think these companies would be able to keep trillions of dollars of their customers' money safe from attackers? Chase seems to be able to. Maybe the tech companies should take a few lessons from them.

[0] http://www.wikiwand.com/en/JPMorgan_Chase#/Financial_data

[1] http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/jpm/financials/ba...
>"classical economics describes the behavior of rational actors with perfect and symmetric information."

Where does it describe the problems this way? Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" is not a theoretical exercise in a moral and emotional vacuum, but an explanation of how development and prosperity come to be in the real world.[1] There are some examples laid out by classical economists which make the assumptions that you describe, but those assumptions were not key tenets of the classical school. Men like Ricardo and Bastiat spent their time addressing the real world, with all its corn laws, broken windows, and import tariffs; instead of the physicist's "friction-less vacuum".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations
Online banking is largely a read-only proposition. It's mostly for reading account activity. Some of the more forward-looking banks will even let you initiate ACH transfers, but generally sending money to a new recipient triggers a 2FA prompt (debit card number prompt, phone call, text) and several secondary notifications, with several days to say "that wasn't me" before the money is gone.

I wouldn't voluntarily post my bank account credentials on the internet, but at the end of the day, the security of an online banking account just doesn't matter very much.

The security of the transaction mechanisms do, sure, but that's got little to do with online banking passwords.
> I went on to point out that I don't believe the USG would be constrained by it for different reasons than the outright impunity he suggested; that is, that they would find legal justification for it.

I don't think that's really different; finding the legal justification to cite for it is responding to the political constraint (it also is a means of invoking the impunity, because reliance on such a legal justification provided by superiors within the executive branch itself creates a colorable legal defense against future prosecution without requiring an explicit pardon, even if the justification itself is flawed. This has been identified by many experts as one of the problems with actually prosecuting the people directly involved in torture in the US criminal justice system.)
One of the educational techniques you're alluding to is probably TPR (total physical response), for foreign language teaching.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_physical_response

I had a Spanish teacher and later a Latin teacher (teaching adults) who favored TPR and would tell people to jump a specified number of times, or to touch their heads, and so on. I don't have a clear opinion about the effectiveness of TPR but I thought I'd mention the name so you could use it to search for research if you like.

There is also a century-old approach to using colors to visualize 4D geometry (I think the color represents the offset in the 4th spatial dimension), proposed by Charles H. Hinton; they're called "Hinton cubes". Martin Gardner describes them and reports that some people have found them too effective, I guess becoming mildly obsessed with them or having the learned associations interfere somehow with day-to-day visual perception.
Nearly all of Coca-Cola's headquarters employees ditch voice mail
> Rich people (or people who want to be seen as wealthy) still buy huge SUVs -- and then struggle to park them, because they're not as thin as a horse.

Do Europeans really by SUVs like that? I was under the impression a sports car like a Porsche (or even Ferrari) would be the grander status symbol?
I don't think we should assume things at all.
Good points. If you notice a bunch of little pee clumps, or you cat is trying to use the box way more than normal, probably want to have a vet take a look. Also, if they suddenly stop using the box and start peeing/pooping somewhere else on a consistent basis, have the vet check that out too. Our cats had bladder infections. They start to associate the litter box with pain, so go somewhere else. They may also be trying to send you a message.
The problem with the concept of "utility" as introduced by economists is that it is commonly used in a bait-and-switch.

You can either use utility as a technical and unassailable term, taking it as axiomatic that humans are utility-maximizers. As a consequence, the term becomes vacuous, because whatever any human does at any point in time, well, it must have been because she or he had some unobservable notion of utility that was maximized by whatever they happened to be doing at the time. So you end up with a "scientific theory" that does not actually allow you to make any predictions, which makes it totally worthless.

Furthermore, facts that seemingly contradict utility-maximization are easily argued away: For example, the fact that humans' behaviour does not appear consistent over time is explained by utility functions change over time.[1]

Once you accept the notion of utility based on this technically unassailable approach to it, however, people have a tendency to subtly shift what they mean by utility, sneaking a hidden value judgement into their argument that might be hard to catch (of course, that value judgement always tends to boil down to: the utility that should be maximized is somewhat equivalent to monetary value). [2]

Yes, there may be a small number of genuinely well-meaning academic economists who do this. However, public discourse has very few well-meaning economists[3], and even fewer academic ones. Given the difficulties of the term, it would be a pragmatic move to eliminate it.

Frankly, I think the main reason that eliminating the notion of utility is so difficult is that eliminating that term leaves a vacuum that is difficult to fill. Explaining human nature is an extremely tough problem, which we are basically unable to solve today. Rather than acknowledge that they are unable to do it, economists worship their variant of the "god of the gaps".

[1] Actually, this is very reminiscent of discussions with people who believe in the existence of a god. Whatever fact one points out that either contradicts or does not fit the existing (non-)evidence well, believers just tend to retreat to a technically unassailable definition of god that ends up making the statement "god exists" pretty vacuous.

[2] Again, this is very reminiscent of discussions with people who believe in the existence of a god. Once one concedes that yes, a god whose existence is so vacuous might well exist, they will at some point switch their definition of god back to one which implies that their god can affect the physical world.

[3] The problem is similar to regulatory capture, an idea expressed here: http://physicsoffinance.blogspot.de/2014/11/has-big-business...
Wow! NOW i got it. That is why "having a team managing the chat" is such a big deal (for phase #2). It is not managing the software, but actually chatting.

I do think it is a good business model. Good luck!
I'd consider the _biggest_ problem to be invading Iraq under false pretenses. We've destroyed millions of lives because we tortured people until they told us what Dick Cheney wanted to hear. Yes, we love our children more than Iraqi children but it's not a hypothetical in the latter case.
When I said the approach on "Deep Learning for Answer Sentence Selection" is weird, I didn't mean it was bad. It clearly works! But it isn't exactly the first thing that jumps to mind when thinking of ways to approach the problem either.
I vote stories up when It looks interesting and I want to here what other HNers have to say on the subject. I tend to upvote a wide variety of subjects, I just like it interesting.

I don't like down voting for disagreeing, but I tend to down vote when something is factually inaccurate. I'll upvote stuff I disagree with as long as it is well written. Cannot really have a discussion without different points of view.
> You could probably pay your car off much earlier than 5 years with more rides/higher average ride fare, after which your car is making you money. Clever people will use this extra to finance more cars to run small fleets and effectively live without working.

If it's such a great money spinner, why won't companies do that? Why do you _want_ people to own cars?
Go read the article (or the first 2 paragraphs even), then come back and read the comment.

The point of the article was that Schwab's login security is so broken, even when you do all of the right things yourself, Schwab's implementation of passwords and 2-factor auth may make you think that everything worked when it didn't.

It is my opinion that someone who had read the article, had a Schwab account, and who had enabled 2-factor auth for that account would have responded to or added to the experiences expressed by Jeremy Tunnell. But there are no words in acconrad's post that leads me to believe that they read the article before posting, as it basically amounts to, "When I contacted them about crappy password security, I ended up with a 2-factor fob. You should get one too." ... which is great advice for any system offering 2-factor auth, but it basically ignores the whole purpose of the article, which was to point out how utterly broken the entire process is.

Could I be wrong and acconrad actually read the article first? Sure. But I asked a question which embodied my opinion on the matter, based on what I read up until that point. And so far, I've not seen any evidence to the contrary to change my belief that acconrad commented without reading the article (your reply doesn't contain information/evidence that is applicable to the question that I asked, as I have at no point offered an opinion that you are responding to).

But I've spent entirely too long replying, and won't be following up further. Good day.
I've also been thinking about the concrete representation of symbols and the negative "inhumane" impact of screens, but my conclusion was much different than Victor's: screens take us away from the fullest experience of world, and so their use should be minimized. This is basically Victor's conclusion minus the possibility of what I might call "somatic programs" at scale.

That screens are problematic asserts a moral imperative for programmers to avoid writing applications that are designed to be experiential cul-de-sacs. This, in turn, goes very much against the grain of most technologists and the people who fund them, who are all looking to make the most potent screens they can to pull people out of real life as much as possible. This makes great economic sense, but it is unethical.

Most of us who are so fundamentally tied to a screen for so many years at a time would do well to systematically disengage and interact with the real-world as much as possible. What I wouldn't give at this point in my life to put on a hard-hat and help build a bridge!
Whilst being inflicted with toxoplasmosis is a pretty unpleasant thing, the chances of actually being infected are pretty low provided you maintain good litter tray hygiene. Also cats only release the oocysts once in their lifetime around about the time they digest their first kills that are carriers.

There's a lot of FUD about cat poo and toxoplasmosis, especially with regards to pregnant women and children [1].

Also if you're allowing your cat to poop in your toilet I'd say you're at a greater risk of infection because that poop is going to be airborne and quite possibly casting off oocysts into the air.

Finally having cats use human toilets is not natural, cats naturally want to bury their poop, it's normal for them. Not being able to perform this ritual can stress them out. Also you may miss out spotting signs of bowel or urinary diseases/infections which can bring down a cat pretty quickly if not treated promptly.

If you decide to share your house or flat with a cat then you just need to put up with their natural potty habits, or don't it.

[1]: http://www.humanesociety.org/animals/resources/tips/toxoplas...
only better for rich people. Rent seeking does not follow free market principles (due to fixed supply), and so loses any form of moral highground in my opinion.
Citadel: La nueva variante apunta a la contraseña maestra
> I think that virtually nobody who is certain that self-driving cars will be short-term rentals (ie, the Uber model) has children. It's a HUGE blind spot that the of course mostly very young, mostly childless tech commentariat has.

Why? Can't be less convenient than trains or planes. People take those all the time with kids. (My parents used to.)