skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Reframe to the analogy of biology. Are living organisms simple? Did they scale? Will they continue to scale?

On the one hand, we can look at the amount of stuff that's going on at the cellular level and say "no, life is very complicated." On the other hand, we've gained an understanding of some of the basic constructs in a relatively short period of a few hundred years(vs. millions of years to evolve it) - so maybe there are some simple things about it, after all.

And we might say that it's failing to scale because it takes so much time for evolution to "progress". But if we are simply viewing complexity of life as the metric of progression, then we've done quite a few things to accelerate this progression, just within the time anyone reading this has been alive.

Our perspective is collectively narrowed by the existence of a marketplace and its momentary demands. The construct of "scaling" is imposed through it; but it is not a survival truth that you have to scale to be alive. A small system like a bacterium can remain relatively simple.
> 1) Grants already exist for those who cannot afford college.

If grants were sufficient, would loans exist?

> Yes, it reduces their borrowing burden, but it should not be necessary.

So, in the name of SHOULD, you'd deny people a college education now in order to...

...wait, what are you doing to "deal with the root problems"?
Have you tried RethinkDB?

Disclaimer: I used to work there.
CouchDB just isn't very nice to use. Compared to MongoDB or RethinkDB, it really isn't any fun. You can't do ad-hoc queries and it doesn't give you the tools to properly write/test your map/reduce/rereduce functions. I still don't know how trying the rereduce step is supposed to work.

To make matters worse, the used JS engine is fairly old and the exceedingly wordy documentation is kinda hard to follow.

I'm a lot happier with RethinkDB.
Are you willing to run a "home server" to support this functionality?

Without a trusted/secure appliance in your home, you would need to delegate spending authority to another legal entity, which would then need access to your banking passwords. That's a lot of risk for consumers to accept, and potential liability for a service provider (e.g. if they are hacked and money is directed elsewhere).

The trusted device would still need to contact a central server for open data that assists in scraping/archiving/parsing your bills from every possible utility/bank/vendor, but the execution of payment could happen locally and be controlled by you.

Many banks can automatically pay bills, but they don't usually support complex logic to "audit" a bill before payment.
Even the ultra-low end are frequently DLP these days, just replacing the powerful bulb with an under powered LED.
>A possibility that the Big Thinkers don’t seem to consider is “Maybe colleges aren’t teaching anything of value to employers?”

It's not about employers, but about society. Colleges are supposed to be teaching things that are of value _to society_, not necessarily to employers. Employers should be trying to improve society by rewarding people who produce value to society, not to employers. That is how an employer justifies her power to a society that allows her to have a disproportionate amount of it.

It is very possible that employers' values are not an accurate representation of societal values. Maybe your currency doesn't accurately encapsulate what your society values? Maybe your businesses are not in touch with who their customers/employees are and what motivates them?

Example: I pay rent. I've never received an invoice telling me what that rent pays for or how much I'm actually paying for it. My rent payments are not approval of my landlord, they are necessary for my survival. Yet it gives my landlord economic power regardless of why I'm spending the money. Social values are not measured by economic power.
This sounds like heresy, but you can actually use Postgresql. It has a JSON column type that supports indexing!

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/datatype-json.html
>>>>> Government fuel-economy test cycles, especially those in Europe, approximate the driving style of a heavily sedated 83-year-old librarian. Since the engine is rarely taxed, the turbo doesn't spool up, so no extra fuel is used.

Would a turbo help in the librarian's hybrid car?
Whats the issue with that video? (I can't watch a full 27 min presentation right now)
It seems like a lot of effort to solve a problem that doesn't need any solution. Nobody needs this level of acceleration.
A planned economy loves having a high supply of labor in the same profession. It keeps the ball rolling ("bread for all"). A humorous example is Egypt under Nasser. You need one person to fetch the passport, one person to stamp it, another person to review it, and another person to fetch the coffee.
For the HN crowd - there are also multiple incubators and a small but serious VC crowd. The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network and EDCO are doing great work there fostering a community of entrepreneurs.
Nobody needs an iPhone, either.
I've been working with UE4 since april on a personal project of mine (fps).

While there are layers of abstraction over all of this that I enjoy, I debate really how important it is for me as a game developer to worry about them.

In the old-school days the role of engine developer and game developer were the same.

Now I see there are two disciplines. Those that enjoy making video games and those that enjoy making video game engines.
They bought Terremark.
I took this exact class in person while I was at Berkeley. I also highly recommend. Shewchuk was one of the best lecturers I had.
Sheep and Wi-Fi: Animals with digital collars could act as hotspots
I'm a pretty happy camper using Postgres with hstore:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/hstore.html

You have the flexibility to store arbitrary JSON blobs when you need to, the stability, maturity, and performance of Postgres, and the ability to migrate data to a more rigid schema once your project matures to the point where data validation is more important than raw prototyping speed.

The main drawback so far is that the query interface is a little clumsy.
When faced with a financial crisis brought on by staggering medical expenses, he decides to turn outlaw.

He was faced with a financial crisis brought on by his family's insistence that he visit an out-of-network doctor.
I think allowing for bigger buildings with more population density would free up more land than burying roads.
my biggest complaints about CouchDB revolve around design documents. The documentation on which portion of a design document will trigger the indices to recalculate are awful. I had to figure it out by asking in IRC and then still doing trial/error.

Cloudant is doing some very interesting things relating to querying on a CoudhDB system. They created a query syntax so that you have an option besides map/reduce [1]. I watched their webinar on it and it seems pretty slick, but I have not yet played with it. Also, it is not part of CouchDB yet so there is no option to run tests against locally to verify syntax, response errors, etc, etc.

Cloudant is working to merge many of their changes from BigCouch back into the CouchDB project, so one day I expect CouchDB to have multiple query options [2].

[1] https://cloudant.com/blog/introducing-cloudant-query/#.VLCSc...

[2] https://cloudant.com/blog/update-from-nebraska-the-cloudant-...
Salt Lake City (and apparently all of Utah?) is lucky enough to have some serious open data advocates actually employed in the government. Props to Open Salt Lake and everyone involved for working on the portal and supporting open and transparent government. We "pay" for this government data, after all, so it's great when it's made easily accessible.

I attended a civic data hackathon once, and was pleasantly surprised at the resulting products. My favorite was a "slumlord" app, which mashed up property ownership vs building code violations (or something like that). It was a fun change of pace from a typical hackathon and the requisite dating/shopping/photo sharing apps.
Wrong thread. You want this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8865316
Delphi's computer chauffeur drives me around Las Vegas at CES 2015
Fit for Motivation, If Not Precision
This is why I prefer taxes to regulations. If governments simply said, "pollute as much as you want but we're charging you a progressive tax based on the CO2 output of your vehicles", then the vast majority of automakers would still push for cleaner engines, because otherwise they'd have to pass the taxes on to the consumer. For commuter cars that compete on price, that would be suicide.

But exotics have never and will never compete on price. Ferrari and Lamborghini would be more than happy to pass that tax on to their customers, and the customers would pay the higher prices without blinking.

The Earth gets cleaner, governments get richer, and consumers still get to buy what they want.
Who said anything about scaling? I run simple low utilization services on a replica set because of high availability. Replication only provides secondary reads in terms of scaling and that's not the point. Actual scaling comes from sharding (partitioning of data).
Why I Left the Major Label System
> Because it creates quantitative literacy, because it helps people deal with systems and complexity, to break down problems logically, and to not let biases get in the way of the truth.

None of these things are math. These things can take advantage of math, yes, but they have as much to do with math as figuring out how to use Microsoft Word does.

> Or at least that's what I wish it would be focused on, instead of producing droids who know how to execute symbolic algorithms.

You want to know how to get them to focus on it? Ask them to.

Stop asking people to teach math. Ask them to teach quantitative literacy. Recognize that this isn't necessarily math. Ask them to teach systems theory and complexity theory. Recognize that math is not the best vehicle for understanding those things, especially for grade schoolers. Ask them to teach logic. Recognize that set theory isn't covered in grade school at the moment, and that learning logic isn't going to happen through math. Ask them to teach ways of discerning truth despite bias. That means covering the scientific method, covering statistics, covering research strategies, covering fact-checking.

Be. Honest. With. Your. Goals.

Your goal isn't "Students should know how to derive polynomial expressions." You've stated your goals. Recognize them for what they are. Stop asking math teachers to carry all that weight for you. Stop hoping that students will magically gain "quantitative literacy" from geometry proofs about angles.

You get "droids" because you've asked for "droids".
Make sure you check page #2 too [1]. More build pics, bulb encasing design, cooling, and thermal images. These guys are pretty good marketers. I want to attempt this, and I am not even in the market for a projector, I mean you cannot get better than this for a DIY project [2, 3].

[1] http://forum.allinbox.com/aspectgeek/Projetsencours/18/photo...

[2] http://i.imgur.com/PoIY7aR.jpg

[3] http://i.imgur.com/SNvdzcr.jpg
Artist/architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser had some similar ideas about burying highways and using parkland to absorb some of their emissions, both chemical and auditory - his "invisible, inaudible Green Motorway":

* http://www.pithandvigor.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/under... (linked as part of this blog post: http://www.pithandvigor.com/diy-projects/materials/friedensr...)

* http://www.hundertwasser.com/arch/view-25slashXIII

* http://www.hundertwasser.com/arch/view-25slashXII

* http://www.hundertwasser.com/arch/view-25slashV
> If K-12 and college are making ever-better American workers then capitalists are using their class power to steal from the working class ... If on the other hand ... the problem is simply that engineers keep designing better machines (capital) while our education system turns out workers no better than those of 30 years ago...

This is a key point. People talk about increases in labour productivity (how much output per given unit of labour) but this economic definition doesn't match the day-to-day meaning of the word.

If I devise a new process/system which means that I need only 1 employee rather than 1000, for the same amount of output, that remaining employee hasn't suddenly become 1000 times more productive. (Although it would be measured as such by economists.)

Why should we assume that the capitalist (or the market) would reward workers for such technological progress?
Pedestrian safety is a small portion of all the other safety measures that have increased vehicle weight.

The point I'm trying to make is not that these measures aren't useful, but that had these resources been spent on more clever road design and traffic rules, the overall safety increases would have been higher.

You don't need seatbelts on a subway train (heck, you can even stand up!) because the likelihood of an accident is almost nil. It's my opinion that that's the ideal governments should have been after with road safety for passenger cars.

--------

EDIT: I guess I made some pretty big claims without any numbers to back them up. Here's something [0]. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) found that weight ratios for modern cars have been getting worse, in part because of safety regulations. The top commenter on the original IEEE article cites additional beams inside doors and more metal in the roof supports to meet rollover standards [1].

For some perspective, the average vehicle-to-passenger weight for the Model T was 7.7. A Boeing 787's ratio is 6.3. For the average modern passenger car, it's 25.7 (!!). Both figures assume the only occupant is a single 154-lb person.

[0] http://www.autoblog.com/2015/01/02/breaking-down-vehicle-wei...

[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/cars-weigh-too-much
Lets hope not.
>It's not about employers, but about society. Colleges are supposed to be teaching things that are of value _to society_, not necessarily to employers

Then why are students asked to bear the $100k cost individually? Kinda hard to justify that level of self sacrifice from anyone.
There is video on YouTube where he is interviewed, he still can't speak though but other than that he appears fine. Well, maybe not great he is in a wheelchair too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBFntsxK-vc
I'm not asking if they're going to bleed out money or anything, I'm asking if there is any sign that this whole concept that there is a logistics company hiding inside Uber has any evidence for it.
Absolutely. If your data model is document orientated then it is an excellent choice.

And EVERY database has limitations. You just need to be pragmatic and determine if you will ever really hit them.
> Colleges are supposed to be teaching things that are of value _to society_

Not everyone agrees with you.

- Employers may think colleges should teach things of value to them

- Students may think colleges should teach things which will increase their lifetime earnings

- Government may think colleges should educate people to be good citizens (by whatever definition)

- College professors may think colleges are supposed to be teaching things of interest to them, regardless of the benefit to anyone else
I know that NoSQL has a bunch of advantages with super large datasets, but MySQL really is a solid technology and is underrated in how scalable and robust it is.

You'd be surprised how much MySQL can do and how great the documentation is.
As the amount of vehicles I own that are turbocharged (3) exceeds the amount of Ferraris I own (0) I can only assume your conjecture on the part of me describing what some Ferrari owners may feel are very tangible attributes in their cars is due to differences in passion or particular choice of machine.

What you describe sounds like rally so to illustrate this I'd ask if you had to race your next race surrounded by cushions of anything and at least partly removed from the feel between you the car and the fire/logging road you race on then would your split second decision to Scandinavian flick or not be influenced differently than if you'd have been fully strapped into your racing seat and securely bolted to the floor of the car with no wiggle room and feeling every rut and rock in the road?

I'd even go so far as to say the feel when driving different cars and feeling the effect your inputs have as opposed to having a computer do them for you is vastly different from a hipster attempting to justify why his $100+ Beats headphones are better than a good pair of $29.99 JVC or Panasonic headphones.
It's not personal; it's just Web page
coding.

I am "interested in learning", and that's
exactly why I'm asking.

If you are writing complicated code for
Web pages, then maybe you have some reasons
wby -- I was asking for your reasons.

If such Web page functionality is your job,
then the question would be, why?

My Web pages at 800 pixels wide should look fine
on any screen I can think of, although
maybe on some really small screens some
use of horizontal scroll bars might be needed.

On a large screen on a desktop computer, just see all
800 pixels at once, and still my Web pages
don't take up much room on the screen;
I'm not trying to fill the screen and
I'm guessing that that's a UX advantage.
You don't need to move. There are plenty of companies hiring remote positions based in NY or SF that will pay you a local salary despite being remote.
That kind of depends on your needs. Since the documents are hierarchical, and can be self-contained (depending on design), you can get a write receipt from MongoDB. I think the necessity of ACID applies more to relational databases that are updating multiple related records. If you really need an ACID like transaction in MongoDB, you have to do it in your software and check the write receipts. Of course this can fail if the database server suddenly goes down, but with MongoDB you should be using replica sets anyways.
Monitor that the newest backup is less than N hours old.
Obligatory Doom principle link. http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/the-cryptographic-doom-prin...

Encrypt Then Authenticate, dammit!
interactive and batch processes get handled implicitly without starvation by CPU schedulers? ;)

Look, I'm just saying that the non-technical language being used to advocate for net neutrality poorly matches the technical language, and that will cause problems when properly writing or understanding the language of such law is viewed by non-technical people as providing an opportunity for the industry to self-regulate. I don't entirely disagree, but it's irrelevant if I do, because such human concerns are likely to be raised and it would be possible to write better regulation, IMO, if we avoided the word 'neutral'.

I think, for instance, that a lot of people outside the industry conflate paid prioritization with paying for dedicated bandwidth capacity via high commits. Furthermore, some of the most popular arguments have been provided by Netflix and don't entirely hold water when applied to all parties - if I have bytes and enough people want them, should my provider be required to come to my place and constantly upgrade the link until it cannot be saturated?

[ I know that over time, Netflix refined their argument, but that was more or less how they started the conversation ]

I just think there's a disconnect, I am particularly concerned at how many people are like, "I am for Net Neutrality because I want the government's hands off my Internet!".

[ tilts head ] I'm not sure that's the conversation I want to be having. ;)
I tuned into this as it was playing. I had to explain to my kids why I was laughing (it was in regards to how his face hurt from smiling when thinking about his wife -- I laughed because it was such a wonderful problem to have).
Postgres also got hstore (key-value) and arrays. So, if you only need a little bit of flexibility on top, you can have that, too.
Microsoft open sources internal schematized data framework 'Bond' on GitHub
You pick the database based on the characteristics that are important to your business. If you're cash/resource strapped than ease of operation will be important. If you're ingesting data at high rates from day one then scalability will be important. There are plenty of cases where MongoDB is the right choice from day one and plenty of cases where it isn't.

Who are you to lecture others on what is/is not important for their needs ?
Just go for it straight away, don't plan anything, just start typing. Just keep in the back of your mind that what you're writing is a prototype. After a while of tapping away at the keyboard (minutes, or hours, or days, ...) you will suddenly see the problem in a much clearer way.

At that point don't be afraid to:

1) Rewrite large sections of your prototype where your initial assumptions were wrong

2) Start again

Once you feel you've got a real handle on the problem, (and depending on the size of the project), it could be time to start some formal design based on what you now know.
Stupid question, but how can a web developer relate to Rust? I had to look up 'systems programming' and Wikipedia basically told me it is writing software for certain hardware components.

Will I ever be writing a web application in Rust?
>Ackerman’s point of view that economists were infallible and their suggestions should be adopted uncritically by voters was called into question by the fact that the group neglected to book the most popular speakers, such as Thomas Piketty, into sufficiently large rooms and, though they were videotaping the talks, did not have any provision to show the videos in real-time on screens in lobbies or other rooms. If the nation’s top economists can’t estimate demand for talks by economists can we trust them to tell us what to do about global warming?

I think this touches on the core elephant in the room with modern (especially American) economics. There is often a lot more money and career advancement to be made as an economist if you are productively wrong - making policy proscriptions that serve an agenda, than if you are right.

Of course it does none of them any good to admit that. State this aloud and expect to be ostracized at a conference like this.

It would be helpful to look at economists themselves as rational agents who produce an output (political opinions with the veneer of objectivity) and who respond to incentives.

Bearing in mind that the employment/income options for most economists are:

* Academic departments, funded via student debt.

* Think tanks - nearly all funded by large corporations and high net worth individuals.

* Finance - large banks, hedge funds, etc.

Large corporations usually have different agendas but will seek to form cohesive blocs to increase their power, often under the umbrella of a lobby group. Sometimes they will fight, though. Examples:

* Exxon cares about discrediting climate change.

* Power companies want solar panels dead yesterday.

* Comcast wants net neutrality dead.

* Google and Netflix want net neutrality alive.

* Google's founders want something done about climate change (as do many notable high net worth individuals from a non-fossil fuel background).

* Private colleges want the federal government to keep increasing loans to students.

* Corporations that employ a lot of people and are under threat from unionization would like to see workers' bargaining power curtailed (debt is good at that).

* Everybody in high finance likes debt (obviously). Especially if it is administered by them, but even if it is not, because even if it isn't, one day it could be privatized and produce profits.