skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>"Or, take the mathematical series called the 'Fibonacci series'. It shows up all over the place in nature; nobody knows exactly why. If you take a sunflower and you look at the flower, it has spirals that go in different directions. The number of parts that appear in adjacent spirals are related to one another as successive terms in the Fibonacci series. You find that kind of thing all over nature; it is not well understood why. There is something about the physical world that forces certain kinds of structures to emerge under particular conditions."

So this is why I find Chomsky's conclusions to be suspect when he speaks about topics of which I have no understanding: he's often casually incorrect about topics in other fields. We understand why the Golden Ratio shows up all over the place, especially in biology: it doesn't.

In reality, it's the logarithmic spiral that's common, and it's a due to logarithmic spirals being a necessary characteristic of certain structures that exhibit self-similarity.

This quality was well known to Renaissance and Enlightenment era mathematicians and physicists, as well as to the ancients as the "spira mirabilis", or "marvelous spiral." But it seems to have lost favor in the modern era to a mythos surrounding the Golden Ratio Phi and the Fibonacci sequence.

For example, Jacob Bernoulli, the famed mathematician and no stranger to the Golden Spiral and the Spira Mirabilis, requested the latter be placed above his headstone, with the inscription "Eadem mutata resurgo," meaning "Although changed, I shall arise again," a reference to the then well-understood ability of logarithmic spirals to change scale while preserving shape.

Living organisms likely exploit this property of self-similarity for easy scaling. It's likely helpful to sunflowers to maximize the area of solar exposure, and snails to maximize living space. Once an organism evolves a roughly spiral structure, logarithmic spiral patterns are easy local maxima for the evolutionary algorithm to find, because it gives organisms the ability to scale aspects of their biology without major structural changes. Non-living systems exhibiting logarithmic spirals, such as certain galaxies, are a result of various (different) physical forcing functions that cause self-similarity to arise.

One way to debunk the pseudo-mystical notions surrounding Phi is to very carefully measure the spirals themselves. What you'll actually find is not a series of systems all approximating the same Golden Spiral, but rather very different systems all exhibiting different logarithmic spirals, with the shared characteristic of self-similarity.
Show HN: I heard you like sample code
I tried this on RentACoder a few times. Response was either <crickets> or a polite "no, thank you." I usually only responded to EE hardware or firmware gigs.
By a huge need, I mean that in order for the tech to work, a lot of software has to be written.

I think that the market is made up of anyone currently eating organic, who lives in a southern climate, and would like to have a machine attached to the front wall of their house which produced fresh food for them with little worry or cost, and a lot of good feeling. My impression is that market is huge. It's the organic blogger mom market which seems to be a really big spender.
That’s probably the most reasonable statement I have ever seen on the internet.

I try to judge past decisions in context not just based on what worked. At the time we did not know that each of those servicing missions would work or even if the initial launch would work. Though, clearly one path worked and the Servicing missions where incredibly valuable experience. But, they could have also cost a shuttle and several astronauts lives. Granted, the odds of multiple telescopes being sent up in a fairly short time period is tiny so it's only reasonable on a technical level.

In the end I think the Hubble program is completely justifiable, but that justification needs to be about more than just a quest for pretty false color pictures or worse an example of the sunk cost fallacy.
Any-json converts (almost) anything to JSON
This is really good advice. This is what I get out of hackathons. It doesn't matter whether it's clean, if you want to win, all that matters is that it works. You'll do whatever needs to be done to get there, rather than resting on some set of ideals. I just haven't quite figured out how to create the sense of urgency in my side projects.
If the statistics significance is small due to a paucity of poor reviews, why not apply the test to other books on Amazon, or other products altogether?
I used to use Evernote, but then switched to OneNote while using a laptop if there are a massive amount of things I need to write down.
Finally, I get started and it goes great, the code is really elegant, I put a new programming technique/trick to use ...

That suggests your primary driver was to get to try something new. Once you've satisfied that urge, you move on to the next bite-sized learning experience that will give the same initial rush.

If you want to get into shipping mode, maybe you should try to explicitly force yourself out of "elegant experimentation" mode by doing things the "boring" way, whatever that may be for you.
Show HN: InboxTunes (One song a day. No more. No less.)
Yes, generally it is better to comment on the clothes than the person. "I like your dress" is safer than "you look great."

The reason for this is that clothes are the result of decisions and choices that people make. So, complimenting a piece of clothing is sort of complimenting something a person did.

Whereas, complimenting their overall look (and especially their body) is sort of complimenting something a person is--which most people feel a lot less control over. And, it runs the risk of creating a sense that their body is itself an object to be considered and critiqued.
8,000 programmers for selling cars online? That sounds ridiculous. I also thought that dealers affiliated with GM lobbied to ban direct sales of cars.
Just copy the URL and paste it into Google. Click the link from the Google search results and there should be no paywall.
Sorry, that's still a paywall.

That's the exact same link! Did you typo, or did they change the article link?
> Does this mean we'll soon have mobile web apps that rival native apps in terms of performance or will DOM manipulation still slow everything down?

asm.js has nothing to do with the DOM.So if the browser engine is slow, a fast javascript engine won't make any difference. It only make a difference with pure javascript computation as asmjs basically recreate an "assembly" on top of javascript, which allows to execute compiled C/C++ code.
Thanks, the venue choice is not that big, but will do more choices in the next version
Start Coding in Pyret
Minimum viable non-snarky answer is: read what Rogaway says about the block-level crypto modes here:

http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/modes.pdf

You'll know the part I'm referring to because it reads practically as a response to a chunk of Gattol's page; it's a problem shared by the Wikipedia coverage on full-disk encryption.

Being cagey about it (i) motivates you to actually read the paper and (ii) avoids what would inevitably be an extremely unproductive debate.

(This is a fantastic survey, by the way; if you're interested in crypto, bookmark it forever.)

My amusement about Gattol's page has nothing to do with Gattol; it's just the way his page got used in this thread by someone else, as a sort of rhetorical "fatality" move. I'm confident Gattol is much smarter than I am. I say that because Dimino also tried to take this thread to Gattol on Twitter, too. :)
That doesn't work anymore.

Not sure if it doesn't work at all, or just if you've seen the article first, and then try it.
That's my favorite part of that translation of the Tao Te Ching, too.

Additionally I find value in this rant from Erik Naggum: http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3141310154691952@naggum....

like,
if you aren't using today's fad language in the very latest version of
the IDE, you'll be left behind. aaaugh! but it's good that some people
run like they are scared out of their wits. if they suddenly disappear
over the edge of a cliff, a good number of people will notice in time and
_not_ follow them. those are the ones that matter.

you can scare most people most of the time, but you can't scare all of
the people all of the time -- some will always use Common Lisp.

The problem I face with accepting imperfection in general is twofold: 1) while I may not ever reach perfection, it's still a goal, because I find that I have flaws, and I can (and sometimes do) fix them, and life is better (plus after fixing I may then see new flaws to fix that I couldn't see before) and 2) when I'm forced to use a very imperfect tool for [business reason], when I know about this more perfect (not necessarily more shiny) tool over here but can't use because of [business reason]. In the second case, there are two states that are happier: actively using the better tool, or not knowing about the better tool in the first place. When you already know about the better tool, and can't soon get to the point of using it actively, the transition period can be demoralizing sometimes.
> My father recently paid off his mortgage. To do so, he had to pay cash at one bank with monies withdrawn from an account at a second bank. The total amount was about $5000 dollars. The second bank had to give him every $100 and $50 bill they had in stock, plus a large number of $20s, to cover the withdrawal. One withdrawal wiped out nearly the entire stock of cash at that branch for the day.

Could he not have done a certified/bank check or even a wire transfer? I understand the urge not to incur the $10 or $20 fee (respectively) both instruments incur, but surely that must be easier then carrying cash between financial institutions.

I, of course, pine for the simplicity of UK/EU money transfers.
I agree the 60 pages number is arbitrary, but I think if like the reader you are feeling overwhelmed it is a sign you are trying too much.

I certainly read much larger amounts of new stuff every day when I was younger, but I was also anxious as hell to the point where I blew many good opportunities and even had blood pressure higher than it is today despite the fact that the objective level of pressure in my life is higher than it has ever been.
Omni Launches Today
Exactly. While I could use PGP to encrypt individual files, that's really inconvenient for more than a handful. Putting them into ZIP-style archives introduces potential problems with data being written to temp files, etc. A container-based file system solution would be preferred.

It'd also be nice if it were cross-platform, since lots of people do use different operating systems during their day. I know I do. :)

Over the weekend I was looking at some of the commercial products that are positioning themselves as TC replacements. And most of them are a little too close to the military/govt for my comfort. I'd rather have something open source just for the ability to inspect the code, if nothing else.
> forcing 20 apps to be tied on Android devices.

I didn't knew that Amazon had 20 Google apps tied to its Android devices

By the way, is calle MADA, no MARA. Perhaps, instead of crying for downvoting you have to inform better.
About 50% of my projects die in the following way:

1) I've got an idea for a useful library that might finally make my GitHub not look so lame!

2) Search github: (idea) language:(language)

3) Oh, there's the exact thing I was going to build. Never mind.

Another 49% die this way:

1) It'd be so cool to have X!

2) (thinks about time to actually develop X versus real value it would give me and likelihood of anyone paying me for it to make up the difference)

3) Oh man, screw that, it's not even worth 1/100 that amount of effort.

I'm terrible at generating projects for "itch scratching" reasons because I cost/benefit them to death first, or I think of them 6 months after someone else already had the idea :-/

[EDIT] cleanup
That's a mighty fancy of saying, "it's wrong" without pointing out examples.

But hey, I'm not ultimately the guy who wrote the article. I've poked both the author and Thomas on twitter -- maybe Thomas can help the author correct any inaccuracies. You, too, could help I'd imagine, if you would be more specific about the issues. I'm guessing the author wouldn't want his article to remain inaccurate if folks could point out the specific issues.
Show HN: Send books to your Kindle through Dropbox
probably just used those for easy math, or perhaps if you are in NY of SF then it's not "great" and certainly below market rates. Just because you can live on it, doesn't mean you should if the 9-5 will pay you twice that to do the same type of work.

all that being said, just lower the numbers a bit and the point is pretty good. 60k gross turns into 42k net. At some point there is a line where that 30% is the difference between being viable and not.
That's exactly the same link.
This reminded me of the style of the Cards Against Humanity folks, i.e., irreverent and hilarious
8000 seems like an awfully high number for whats effectively an e-commerce website. Be nice to know some more details of whats happening behind the scenes.
Show HN: The Favour App
Ok let me try to elaborate. That is why I personally have given up on the single-player FPS genre.
Never forget that the core product of Microsoft is Windows, and most of people are forced paying a new license with each new computer. So any decision MS makes is,as an ultimate goal to sell windows licenses. Today there is a consensus on Open Web Techs. Nobody can tell if it will still be the case 5 years from now.
You can't do every aspect of everything well, I would say it is even foolish to try. If you want to try out react.js (for example), make a shitty skeletal HTML file, put in a script tag, and start doing stuff. The app doesn't have to run in a well-managed hosted environment with a cool hostname and all that. Don't make build scripts, etc., until you have to.

There is a time for best practices but you shouldn't focus on the best practices for things that are ancillary for what you're really trying to learn. This is what focusing is all about, paying attention to what's important and disregarding the rest. Don't dick around with editor configs.
Looks like the sale ultimately goes through the dealership.
It takes a lot longer to craft a gracious email than it does to have an in-person meeting. In my experience, termination meetings are very brief (for a couple of reasons that shouldn't be too hard to figure out).

All I'm saying is that it's circumstantial. There are definitely cases where an in-person firing is an important part of showing respect; maybe we'll even say it's the default case. But there are cases where it's more respectful, dependent on circumstances and personalities, to do it in an asynchronous communication channel (taped message, email, etc).

Walk through the logistics of firing 900 people individually, one at a time, looking each in the eye individually each time (and/or having your highest-ranking representative do it at various offices), and you'll notice there are some serious problems with this solution too. Is it better to leave the employee in agony all day, wondering when or if he's going to get called, getting increasingly more angry as his friends drop out one by one while he retains access to internal company systems, etc., just so you can walk around and tell everyone "I looked 'im straight in the eye!" If you think beyond this weird hangup that some people have, you'll see that there is really every reason to do the firing in a more efficient way in these cases. The only thing lost is the good vibes from any recently-fired employees that decide the opportunity to stare down their boss before they get terminated is a critical part of their self-worth, which honestly, probably scarcely existed in the first place.

We should do the best thing for all involved, not the most politically correct thing. It's politically correct to have a final showdown where you stare down the person you're about to fire, but it's not always actually the best option.
I don't believe the International Astronomical Union has offered an opinion about the Webster's definition of the word, or about how you and your six year-old may use "planet" in ordinary language.

The IAU's definition is a scientific definition, one that pertains to usage among astronomers. Insisting that astronomers make up another word is silly for all the same reasons that (as you pointed out) it would be silly for astronomers to tell us how to use one of our everyday, non-technical words. The same sequence of characters or phonemes can have slightly different meanings in different contexts.
I repeat, what walled garden when it is not forbidden change or install anything on an Android device.

And still waiting any single proof of that MADA restrictions. perhaps you don't find them because you even can't spell it right.
I kind of agree with this. Let there be planets and perhaps that should include 'subplanets' and then let there be a next level to their taxonomy where they can be described as 'clear orbit' or not.

I expect that there will be further 'evolutions' of the definition as we learn more and more about exoplanets, there are nearly 2000 of them already.

Seems like the biological sciences have done a decent job, you've got your common names and then Latin taxonomical descriptions which make up formal names.
Good point, maybe bad reviews should have a length requirement. Might be more constructive or get rid of the 1-star reviews like "didn't work", "couldn't download" for apps/games as well.
Why nav bar fixed?
I've just sent this to Confreaks :

"Hi,
I'm longtime rails dev now and an heavily addicted to confreaks. I've been on your site for years wondering : when are they going to improve it. I even thought of volunteering at some point... But hey great you've finally done it. But please ! Please, please, please remove the nav-bar-fixed of your menu, it feels like I'm always bending to avoid banging my head on a roof conceived for dwarfs and it's hurting my back ! It's fine for mobile but desktop screens are large and proportionally have no height. The fixed nav bar is a pure heresy in such context and I'm sure we'll all get rid of soon like the <blink> tag and the flash intro soon. So why not do it now ?
Thanks for your consideration"

Am I the only here ?
Full-disk encryption is block-level encryption. If you're using TrueCrypt to encrypt anything, you're using block-level encryption. There is no functional difference between them. If you are not encrypting your entire disk, then block-level encryption is a bad idea because 1) it doesn't provide authentication, and 2) block-level encryption (using strategies like XTS) is not as strong as regular authenticated encryption using CBC and a MAC or whatever.

If you're not using TrueCrypt for full-disk or full-volume encryption, you'd be better off using basically anything else. There are plenty of cross-platform tools for doing that kind of thing.
Who's putting their bets on Microsoft going open source with Trident and Chakra next? Spartan is an opportunity for them to clean up the mess before releasing the codes I think.
All you need to know about founding your startup in Vienna
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

Non pay wall link.
Case Study: Breathometer and Uber Tackle Drunk Driving
Thanks, I summarized them on: http://www.brendangregg.com/FlameGraphs/cpuflamegraphs.html . They are really helpful for seeing the big picture of CPU usage, and quantifying the contribution by different code paths.

The flamegraph code is on github (https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph). There's other implementations too (see http://www.brendangregg.com/flamegraphs.html#Updates).

We're using them primarily to analyze CPU usage of the Linux and FreeBSD kernels, Java, and Node.js. We had an earlier post about the Node.js ones: http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/11/nodejs-in-flames.html
I think this should work: https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...
Indeed. It's just a udev rule with: SYMLINK+="whiteboard
Another one that I only know about because a relative of mine works there is http://kitewheel.com/ . I think it's designed and priced for large corporations, though.
Wow, you've just described my current state of being. I literally froze up mentally last weekend because I had too many things on my mind. Things related to learning/projects/ideas. I kept jumping between them, like a processor performs context switching, but a lot less successfully. It was like bouncing a ball between two walls, and slowly making the gap smaller. The ball's bounces increase exponentially until it cannot anymore. It's at this point you've crashed.
I like this. Its simple and there is a big audience. Well done.
Here's an analysis of how often you would have to change the marker on a similar clock:
https://pay.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/2vky0v/requ...
I love to hear about companies insourcing development. There are still myriad ways that a project can fall to pieces, but paying for internal developers is a step in the right direction.
It wouldn't matter if this was covered or not. Their license is saying that you can use their stuff as long as you don't question any of their patents.
David Sacks' Law
You don't even try to rename them manually?

In fact, a very nice way of starting this would be a command-line tool that renamed files according to file metadata and some heuristics with the file inner content.
Pedantic, but hopefully in a fun way:

Authentication is the biggest problem with sector-level crypto, but the other technical problem with encrypting sectors is that you don't get a place to store the metadata you'd need to randomize the encryption, and so you lose semantic security as well. If you squint at it the right way, XTS is the ECB mode of sector-level (wide-block) crypto schemes.
I suspect that number is sum of all their IT support staff, e.g. QA, admins, etc. I would wager the core development was done with at most 5% of that.
I wish HN detected Paywall links and would reject them. Sifting through comments to find a link that works is :(
I know you're just getting started with a lot of this, but how much planning are you doing with counterintitive transit issues, like bus holdovers at major transit centers? There are a lot of frustrations of busses scheduled to drop off or pick up passengers at stations, but with no layover to do both duties. This naturally leads to rather grumpy transit riders. Is your application going to be set up to handle situations like that?
Assigning people unchangeable and public UUIDs is worth doing regardless and has nothing to do with espionage. Please don't damage such proposals by associating them with controversial topics like this one.
Its a take on an Oscar Wilde quote:

"A true friend stabs you in the front."
If they can, they would be stupid not to. And the NSA should be doing everything in their power to stop them from doing so.
It disturbs you that other people have different political views than you do?
I experienced that a few times before finding one good cure: telling people about my project!
Every time they see me, they will ask me about it and when it is being released. When that happens to you and you have nothing substantial to answer, you realize you've been fooling around too much. Try it
In case you're taking this seriously, consider other possible explanations. Maybe more eloquent people are less likely to write negative reviews in general, not just for this book. Maybe feeling negative makes a person less eloquent. Maybe this book was marketed to a group of people who are generally educated but gullible when it comes to the subject matter.

It could be that their critics are idiots, but this isn't much evidence. (And I'm pretty sure they're joking.)