skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In the early 80s, my parents went to garage sales and bought me tons of used Lego sets. None of the sets were anywhere near complete, and most of them didn't even come with a picture of the set they belonged to.

My parents just dumped everything into a large bin and gave me no instructions other than what the shape of the blocks themselves suggested. There were parts of cars, parts of airplanes, parts of castles and police stations and pirate ships.

So I made flying cars, pirate castles, police ships, and everything in between.

Later, when my parents could afford to buy me a brand-new Lego set for a special occasion, I wouldn't even try to build what was shown on the cover. All the new blocks would go into the bin with the old ones, and I'd mash them together to build crazy things.

I think those Lego blocks made me become a programmer.

These days, when I browse the Lego section at any large toy store, all I see are heavily customized ("licensed") sets that seriously restrict what you can build with them. The bow of a ship is no longer a jagged stack of rectangular blocks; it's a large, smooth, custom-molded piece that can't easily fit in anything but a ship. They look beautiful, like a nice iOS app, but they no longer inspire creativity like they used to. Instead of Minecraft, you get FarmVille.

I could still build a pirate-themed spaceport with that set, of course, if I had a lot of rectangular pieces. But most sets don't contain a lot of versatile, rectanguler pieces anymore. You need to buy a very large set for that.

So maybe that's part of the reason why we think Lego is getting more expensive. There have always been small, cheap sets and large, expensive sets. But unlike in the 80's, most of the small sets are no longer worth buying. They are so heavily themed and custom molded that the average kid can't do anything truly creative with them. Serious players are therefore forced to buy large, expensive sets. Because if you buy a 1000-piece pirate ship, maybe half of those pieces will still be useful when you later decide to build a nuclear missile silo.

Some time ago, I heard that you could just order a bag of generic blocks from Lego. I wonder if this is true, because if and when I have kids, I'd like to buy them that. Or maybe I'll just ask my parents if they still have my old bin of mismatched secondhand bricks.
Is Blockchain Really the Killer App?
I don't know if it's an artifact of the webfilter at my job, but all the mathematical expressions in the discussion show up as "[Math Processing Error]" in red italics. (Win7, Firefox 35) Anyone else see this?
If there is no reason to believe in collapse, there is no reason to believe that we can only be conscious of our state of entanglement with one component of a wavefunction rather than both.

Absolutely true. The process of cognition is addressed by science. Consciousness, not so much.

That is, the Everret interpretation assumes that for some unknown reason we can only be conscious of the classical world, and uses this assumption to "explain" that we are conscious only of the classical world.

No such assumption is made. In fact you are the one adding an implicit assumption that consciousness obeys classical rules, when we have no data suggesting that such is the case.

Consider a polarizing beam splitter with detectors in either arm. We are only ever conscious of a photon being detected in one arm or the other. But why not both, since the matter of our brain is necessarily entangled with both components of the photon wavefunction?

This is a non-issue if consciousness can exist in non-interacting superpositions? Indeed there is indirect evidence that this is the case.

While science is currently unable to explain the phenomena of consciousness, we are able to say a lot about the process of cognition. And to date nobody has ever demonstrated that we can be conscious of something we did not learn about through physically understood processes. (If you have such a demonstration, there is a million dollar prize waiting for you, courtesy of James Randi.)

Quantum mechanics predicts that entanglement will cause that physical system to separate into a superposition of non-interacting states. And therefore all evidence is that there is no way for your consciousness of one state to affect cognition and therefore any awareness of any other.

Again, this is now a non-problem.
Show HN: ClusterK – EC2 AWS spot orchestration service
Dear startups,

We've recently launched our service that helps deploy capacity across AWS EC2 spot to provide high availability and up to 90% discount on compute. Magic happens by us predicting spot prices and distributing capacity across dozens of uncorrelated Spot auctions to limit exposure to possible price spikes.

As serial entrepreneurs we know first hand how important it is to iterate quickly and reducing the compute cost is one of the ways to approach it. If your company's AWS bill is significant (>$10k/month) and you have an interesting use case that we can discuss - we'd be happy to offer a free trial access to our service for up to 6 months.

Our current use cases from private beta include web-tiers, Hadoop, Spark, Mesos tiers, and HPC workloads (Bioinformatics, rendering).

Feel free to post your questions here or reach out to us directly (and please mention that you're from HN).

Best,

Dmitry
http://www.clusterk.com
(http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/19/clusterk/)
Looking at the Lego website, that does seem to be the case - but I couldn't tell if that has always been the case. Many of the sets don't look like you'd have much freedom other than to follow the directions due to the large number of set-specific pieces.
There's also something else at play that isn't just "cream rises."

If you're a top student who chose a slightly suboptimal grad school for personal reasons (to be near a significant other, taking care of a family member, already have a house somewhere, etc.), you may not realize that the game became cripplingly hard for you until you're near the end of your program.

The top universities often:
(1) send grad students to conferences (including travel costs) whether or not they have results to present that year,
(2) hire lab techs and admins, which allows grad students more time to do actual research, and
(3) make it more likely that the student gets a grant proposal accepted by the NIH/NSF/other agency.

And you know, maybe you hold out hope because your advisor let you and your lab mates volunteer stuffing all the swag bags the night before a conference that happens to be in your city that year so you can go talk to all the other folks at the top of your field. Maybe you actually get a grant funded, unlike your classmates. Maybe you put in that many more hours so you can handle your share of the grunt work on top of research you'll actually get published. No weekends for five years. Do you do it? Maybe.
>But these tools aren't going anywhere until all the embarrassingly smart technologists around here stop wasting their time pretending to be lawyers (the law and lawmakers aren't going to get us out of this hole) and design better tech to stop the next Boston bombing, Charlie Hedbo style attack or ISIS recruitment drives.

You're wrong on two counts.

1.) It's American foreign policy that created anti-american Islamic extremism. It's American foreign policy that must fix it. You cannot expect tech to fix the problems of that. Technologies are tools, nothing more. Terrorists and tax payers are technology users alike, and that will always be the case. (Sidenote: anyone who is intelligent should hate the word 'terrorism', it is blatantly doublespeak.)

2.) These spy tools are going to die, because we can make technology that makes them infeasible. Indeed, we already have. Tor is reportedly unstoppable by the NSA. GPG exists and falls under the same category. The way things are headed, the only thing that will change with time is that tech companies will embrace encryption and help the general population of innocents to stop being tracked.

Those that care enough (eg: terrorists, libertarians, anarchists, and nerds) have already taken back their freedom... And will continue to do so. And there's nothing those 3 letter agencies can do to prevent it, because they've shown their hand. Anyone who has taken a cryptography class / a theory class knows that it's an unwinnable battle to try to fight RSA... It's just a matter of time before someone persuasive enough gets the message through to policy makers.
Netflix's data model. They render asynchronously, which lets the render method itself ask Falkor for data it needs and delay rendering until it gets a response.

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/netflix-reactive-rest
http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/01/reactive-programming-at-...
Show HN: An interactive random color generator
Article discusses that argument. ("Meritocracy")

Furthermore, articles would be greatly puffed up if they had to preempt random arguments which uncritically mention notions like "top 1% of grad students". (Kind of depresses me that I'm immersed in such a tech/managerialist culture that this argument popped into my head too while reading the article, requiring me to spend time evaluating it.)
> no one can effectively quantify employee performance in "knowledge work"

That's certainly not universally true. You can look at engineer commits, bug counts, speed of execution, all sort of metrics that would be directly impacted by distractions. If these were plummeting under open plan it would be pretty clear to management that it was costing them more money, not less.
I think the inventory carried by retailers is more driven by marketing theme sets, but LEGO itself still carries generic building sets. (e.g. http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Ultimate-Building-Set-Pieces/dp/B...) You can even IIRC order specific parts in bulk directly from LEGO. But if you google, bulk lego, the most likely thing you'll come across lots of ways to pickup large amounts of used bricks from ebay or similar sources.
I get they don't use gmail for their own email... I'm thinking more about s/mime and really why aren't companies emailing their account holders with signed email.

When I get an email from my bank why doesn't it have any sort of authentication so I know it is from my bank and not someone pretending to be my bank.
I partially agree. One of the reason of the subprime bust was that investor bonuses were not risk adjusted. They would cross-buy subprime assets, cash in the high returns and associated bonuses, and ignore the risks. The very low interest rates, while not the only culprit, provided the money flow for those alternative assets.

I'm not arguing that alternative assets, VC specially (!), are bad. But just that liquidity provided by QE may be, tempting not-so-ethical fund managers and IBs close deals on unrealistic valuations fueled by a crazy stock market.

But creating a risk-adjusted yearly bonus scheme is not something easy. I'd be interested to know if the smart guys around here ever approached the issue.
They do make a couple of generic bins. ($0.61/brick on Amazon) and you can pick up clean lots on eBay. Though I've not seen it myself I'm also told you can buy from bins at the Lego stores.

I know what you mean though, as none of these yields exactly the set I'd prefer (lots of variety in very few colors).
I was surprised when I found out that there were faculty candidates from University of Washington at both Berkeley and Stanford.

This is amazing, and shows that Tier 2 schools can send students to become profs at the 'top 4'
Perhaps you need to go to a different store? Lego City is still by far the biggest representative in most stores I visit. Whilst they do have Star Wars, Marvel/DC, Minecraft etc, their own branded pirates, Ninjago and Chima represent a far bigger slice of their offering across their range.

If you're after something even more generic than that, Lego have always had "creative" boxes available as well. They've actually just come out with a new series: http://shop.lego.com/en-AU/Classic-ByTheme
I'm disappointed by the EFF's stance here: it simply isn't strong enough.

I'm in the camp that believes there shouldn't be software patents period. Simple as that.

As for ending the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals on patent case appeals, I assume this is because that court has frequently been overly friendly to patent plaintiff claims. Some might argue it's gone so far as regulatory capture. What's more, the court has repeatedly been overturned by the SCOTUS.

That's a fair argument but what they're forgetting was that the USCoAftFC was introduced to solve a problem. We have the problem now that there is inconsistent treatment of patent cases in Federal district courts, leading plaintiffs to file cases in "friendly" jurisdictions, most notably East Texas.

Prior to 1982, you had the same problem at the appeals level and you had a rush to file appeals in friendly jurisdictions. This court was certainly intended to provide consistent treatment of patent cases and--ideally--allow for experts in patent law to handle such cases.

But the fact that this court has really had trouble finding a patent they didn't like is a sideshow: the real problem here is software patents.

You can't patent a mathematical formula and as anyone with any kind of Computer Science education could tell you, an algorithm is essentially indistinguishable from a mathematical function. The fact that the US courts have ignored this or simply been unable to comprehend it is at the root of the problem.
$665M Jury Award Against Palestinian Groups in Terrorism Case
Lawmaker asks if swallowed camera be used for female exam
Fair enough, but it shouldn't be HN's fault if people are lazy about viewing the site.
Try reading http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.2211.pdf This basically presents many worlds as a mass density obtained by integrating out the wave function. The worlds we see can be traced through the evolution, like two videos overlain on each other can be deduced over time.
As a former grad student, I am not at all surprised by this. Academia is a very personality-driven world where prestige, connections, and social capital matter at least as much as the quality of one's work. The prestige, influence, and connections of one's department and dissertation advisor make a huge difference, and the most prestigious advisors tend to work at the most prestigious universities.

In a job market with so few openings, especially in the humanities, this clearly has a distorting effect. I suspect that if the job market were not so bad, the effects described in this study would be reduced.
Does expect count?
I'd be curious to the best practices for hiring a freelancer. For example, what you should bring to the table to make the engagement easier for both parties. I would think a wire frame, but not sure what else to give the freelancer the ability to start coding from the get go.
Silicon Valley Could Learn a Lot From Skater Culture, Just Not Meritocracy
This demonstrates a big complaint with the WebCrypto API: it exposes a bunch of stuff you never want to be dealing with --- either directly or, in some cases, at all:

* Never use RSA PKCS1v15

* Avoid padding arbitrary data to RSA-OAEP encryption (you only ever want to encrypt keys)

* The "nonce" bits of the AES-CTR must be random, but the API doesn't even make it obvious which bits those are. Screw that up and you get no security.

* Avoid AES-CBC.

* You can't securely use AES-CBC or AES-CTR without a MAC.

* Never, ever use AES-CFB.

* Avoid multiplicative group DH (what WebCrypto calls "DH").

Out of all those examples, the only interfaces that approach "safe" are AES-GCM and AES-CMAC, and even the AES-GCM case makes it awfully easy to repeat the nonce, which is a devastating vulnerability.

As I understand it, whatever HN might want to believe this API is for, its real purpose is to make it possible to implement DRM without plugins. It's a compat interface, and it shows.
The reality is that there are not many business uses for massively parallel computation in a small package. This affects large FPGAs as well. The only real market is in the defense industry where price is no object but it is also a very risk averse industry and is unlikely to take a chance on a startup that could go under at any time not to mention that it prefers parts fabbed on special lines from approved vendors. Software shops aren't going to take a risk on leaving the world they know and are more likely to bang their head trying to make conventional DSPs work if a normal processor won't cut it.
In case you didn't see this: http://crockpotveggies.com/2015/02/09/automating-tinder-with...
As they say: "Gallium Arsenide is the material of the future, and will always remain so" (1986)
Paying ten cents for a bring you can reuse hundreds of time is much cheaper than paying ten cents for a brick that can only be used once and has to be kept with its mates in order to preserve the "value" of the kit.

Also, paying suggested retail price for an "in demand" kit is unheard of. When my nephew got the "Black Pearl" for Christmas a couple of years ago, his parents paid $250. TIL the MSRP was apparently $100 (although that information was not available to them at the time.) If someone knew they were paying $250 for a $100 kit, maybe they wouldn't think it was Lego who was ripping them off.
Imagine people with stunted growth or disfigurement as a result of non-genetic circumstance, using a more accurate form of this technology to see what they would have looked like otherwise.

Profoundly sad to think about.

On the other hand, one possible use for such renderings could be to guide reconstructive medical procedures.
> When I get an email from my bank why doesn't it have any sort of authentication so I know it is from my bank and not someone pretending to be my bank.

It probably does, but the mechanisms are directed at MTAs and not displayed to end-users.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys_Identified_Mail

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework

They're the reason all the phishing spam that looks like it's from your bank ends up effectively spam filtered, while real mail from your bank makes it to you. All of the top 10 US banks have SPF/DKIM set up.
I've been waiting to see something like this, it's very neat (if somewhat unrefined).

Now apply OldBooth and we'll be able to see what our babies will look like. Brave New World here we come!
You can buy generic blocks at Lego shops in a pick n' mix fashion. Not just blocks, but also men, wheels, trees, etc.

I don't know if they provide an online service.

This is in the UK, I don't know what Lego shops are like elsewhere.
When Spain closes its doors on Uber, Uber finds a most delicious open window
Ask HN: NY to CA. Co-Founder
Im comming from NY to CA & staying in CA until I find a co-founder. (BTW,Product Is built, traction etc) The one key ingredient missing now is getting a c-founder. (Network is tapped out in NY). Where do you recommend in SV scouting for Co-Founders. Camp out @ Stanford?
Learn Edward Snowden before watching today at HBO
same here - we love masha and bear and some weird south korean cars-as-people thing
Maybe there's a spectrum of responses and the people on the gentle end just don't have difficulty putting up with the symptoms unless the material is literally pressed to their skin for hours on end?

My hands feel slightly puffy and look slightly red after handling some types of rubber. I can wear latex gloves without issue, so that's not it, but if there are people who react to latex like I react to certain kinds of rubber then I can easily imagine the allergy going unreported.
Agreed. It seems like nutrition, illness/disease, and random developmental quirks would all drastically affect the actual shape of a human's face between birth and adulthood. You might be able to predict a range of faces to account for these differences, I guess, but then you have a broad range of faces that might match a broad range of people...
I mostly agree with you, but I'm not giving you an upvote because I just went through the following:

I worked in an office with an open floor plan. It was freezing all the time, strategists come over every 10 minutes and tap you on the shoulder, someone closed a deal so people break out the whistles and air horns and shit, and when you did work from home for a day, people made you feel guilty. I got tired of it and said "fuck it, I'm looking for a new job".

I got a number of interviews from companies of all walks of life, but they all had one thing in common: Programming jobs with the application on Github and the ability to use your own computer for development. So why the fuck not work from home? Well, turns out only one company I interviewed with let people work remotely. In fact, that company is completely remote with no real office. And that's the job I took.

You see, these jobs are rare and I sympathize with anyone who is stuck working in an office and wants to work from <insert location here>.
You can't avoid trusting trust. "Ken was here" :)
Agree completely re the big specific bricks.

I guess this[1] is what you're looking for. Unfortunately, Lego is out of bricks...

[1] http://shop.lego.com/en-US/catalog/productSearch.jsp?searchP...
5 seems fairly arbitrary. If all 5 are almost the same then you are back in the same boat, no? If all data points for a given filter are substantially the same you still run into the same issue.
especially when a cable snaps
Open Mic Disaster: Why the Federal Election Commission Is Ineffective
We've been working hard to make srclib's backend more powerful, and we've just started to build features that take advantage of the new backend. I've sent you an email, and we'd love to work more closely as srclib nears v1.0.
Every year I've gone to Burning Man I've lived in a tensegrity-supported structure. See

http://shelter-systems.com
React.rb – An Opal Ruby Wrapper for React.js
https://twitter.com/ryan_p_adams/status/563384710781734913
If we're targeting O(n log n), we could just sort the array and examine the number of times the minimum entry appears.
When I was in college at Rice, one of the harder projects in a sophomore level software engineering class was implementing Gzip according to RFC 1951 and RFC 1952. We had about an hour lecture explaining what huffman coding was and then were left to our own devices for three weeks.

Half the challenge was just understanding what the RFCs were talking about, teaching ourselves huffman coding, and then figuring out how to build this low level stuff in Java in a reasonable way. This was definitely one of the hardest projects I had up until that point.

We had a class discussion afterwards about what was so difficult about implementing GZIP and a few of us mentioned the RFCs were tough to figure out. Professor laughed and said something along the lines of "Besides just learning computer science, we're hoping to teach you the value of good documentation!"
My experience is similar to yours. I have an SE sitting right here (still works!).

Being good at interviews comes with work experience. You get better at evaluating/profiling employers, and responding accordingly.

What I've come to believe is that at many of the big names, unless you're very highly specialized or have a very valuable, unique skill-set (I don't) - then you can expect to be treated like a cog (tested for strength, then run around on rote tasks until you're replaced). I no longer move forward with technical interviews, unless it's a very special opportunity (cool, fun, meaningful). That said - I'm sure working at Apple you'd have to chance to learn from some really talented people.

My guess is a startup might be a better fit for you at this point. Pick one where you be working with good senior engineers (key that they're nice people, who'll make good mentors). Work there a year or so, then find something better. Repeat.

Are you actively coding? You should be. Get on Github and either find a project or start one.