skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Competition law doesn't punish market power, that would be insane. The abuse of market power is what is illegal. And abuse needs to be proven.

Regulation doesn't require proof of illegal behavior. Yes to punish Google executives criminally would require proof of illegal behavior.

But congress could easily pass a law that said search engine companies are subject to government search algorithm audits, with no proof of illegal activity required.

>So far we've seen no evidence that the defendant has indeed killed anyone, but...

This is a regulatory issue, not a criminal trial. I'm not suggesting that any Google executives be punished for anything.

I'm suggesting that the potential for Google to do harm is too large not to examine the possibility of regulation. We don't allow private citizens to make weapons of mass destruction because the potential for harm is too great. In my opinion we also shouldn't allow private citizens to control the internet.
I get the impression he wouldn't bother with LinkedIn.
I hope Facebook, Internet.org and Zuck give up their charade of philanthropy and come out clean because I can't seem to identify the so-called "poor" people of India from their ad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s390lZ5UXc4
I work for Planet Labs, and our satellites are 5kg[1] each, providing 3-5m ground-resolution imaging. You can do a lot with relatively little mass these days.

1: http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/flock-1.htm
I think is nonsense and pretentious

If your experience of film photography is sending a roll off and getting an envelope of prints back, then maybe, but if you are developing yourself, the development process involves all sorts of trade-offs of time, temperature, and chemistry, then wet-printing is more of the same, along with literal dodging and burning (do you ever wonder why the Photoshop tools are called that?). It really has very, very little in common with a digital workflow. So your point is one from ignorance.
I think you meant https://github.com/TeaWithStrangers . Their site shows 404 for any invalid URL
Sure. Here's a pretty good summary: http://www.wired.com/2013/04/psychedlic/

Basically, Leary grew to prominence but his scientific methods were often faulty and he turned to mysticism. He became a cultural advocate, not a scientific one. But his ties to psychedelic research it a bad name and made it much more difficult for people to get their hands on these drugs for the purposes of actual research. Eventually, mostly due to backlash against Leary, these substances were prohibited from research use for several decades. It was only in the late 90s that we began to pick up the pieces.
I have been waiting for this!
I hope to see forms similar to google drive to accept outside input from "non collaborators" and I can't wait for your API.
I do not! Would love to hear more info, I am really only commenting on the hardware I know/own. But I have heard pretty good things about their replication and how they are neck and neck with Nutanix. I have UCS for my main sites, and Nutanix for my Remote offices and its working great!
Was there a countersuit for their illegal entry?
My government (USA) seems to be shooting itself in the foot re: hurting our tech industries: NSA collections and back doors cause foreign companies to not use our tech, etc.

France seems to want to catch up with the USA, and hurt its tech industries and infrastructure also.

I don't understand it, unless it is just putting the interest of government bureaucracies ahead of the public good.
Mathematician solves the Cheryl's Birthday problem
any plan for bangalore? tea fanatic here :)
I think the above comment of it cost only a few hundred thousand dollars is just the cost of the fuel. Ancillary costs like moving the rocket, repairs, refueling, launch planning etc would also cost some money but it is still orders of magnitude cheaper than building new rockets or heavy repairs from crash landings.
I was thinking the same but there's a photo. I suspect the author isn't American.
> Ultimately, a flexible environment that reflects the needs of parents will help create a better workplace culture for everyone, kids or no kids.

I keep seeing this idea float around. Citation needed, please. :-) Is it true? How do we know it's true?
I can appreciate this position since the digital screen people view photos on can't be controlled by the content creator and screens vary a ton (in resolution, contrast, color).
That's exactly what I do too, but it goes against the instructions that pop up on my Paperwhite -- it says turn up the light when the ambient light is brighter.
The point was that it is larger than some existing countries.
The search for extraterrestrials goes intergalactic
Just to summarize your points as I see them. Only join a fraternity if...

a) You don't have social skills, so you can learn them (even though I think this can be achieved through plenty of other organizations on campus)

b) You aspire to be in management, i.e. not technical trades or career paths that don't require heavy person sacrifice and investment (like STEM or startups... again something that I also think can be achieved in other groups on campus - if even just the 'business fraternity' which a lot of uni's have, which is actually a club and not a 'fraternity').

I am glad however, that joining a fraternity worked out for you. I do also think almost everyone looks favorably on their college experience and have trouble imagining it had they made different choices.

But again, it's a massive time sink, and if there is something you are truly serious, ambitious about pursuing, a fraternity will absolutely work against you. If you just want to have 'a college experience', and if you don't really know what you want to do, then sure, join a fraternity.

(As a final note, the successful people I know from my fraternity are working basically non technical finance jobs (non technical in the sense there aren't heavy prerequisites before you start except be generally good at math) at ibanks or hedge funds that their parents or network got them, basically jobs where you can afford to mess around most of college, so long as you have your connection.)
Huh. I only read the first book and a half of the Culture, but I didn't find it enormously positive. The basic message seemed to be "You can fix every one of humanity's problems, and people will just invent new and exciting ways to be horrible to each other."
Thank you. That makes sense. So basically the empty file is seen by the shell as a "script" that has to be evaluated, so a separate shell process is spun up to handle it? And the difference between my output and the parent's has to do with some difference in our environments?
You don't really need a site for that - just walk into a pub.
Except Facebook is directly profiting. It wouldn't be as "scummy" if Facebook left themselves out of the "deal".
Even if a scientist can legitimately prove depression is different from sadness, you will not believe it, because it requires a degree of subjectivity you will not tolerate. You expect a kind of purity, an objective, emotionless vocabulary with it's associated numeric data; data that has been wiped clean of the people and the lives of those people it describes, to describe that which is fundamentally indescribable to someone who has never experienced it.

Sometimes compassion means saying 'okay, I understand, that sucks?'.
I love tea with strangers! Highly recommend everyone to try a teatime out :)
It's not just a matter of 'better' frequencies. It's trivial to have a softsynth or something similar set up to use just intonation (and many modern composers have experimented with this), but that has practical problems of it's own. Problems which were the very reason that equal temperement took over in the first place. This page has some wonderful examples http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/asn/homepage/teaching/exp-l...
Virtualizion of 3D graphics/animation is challenging.
"Anom users is a recipe for disaster", says someone known only as "marvel_boy".

I've always been pretty skeptical of the "anonymity causes bad behavior, non-anonymity causes good behavior" theory, especially since the supporting argument usually consists only of a link to a Penny Arcade comic. Certainly some of the best and most humane communities I've been part of have been largely anonymous or pseudonymous, and some of the most vitriolically toxic have been tied to peoples' other (persistent and supposedly "realer") identities.
Tenant's rights laws usually ban the landlord from entering the apartment without notice (except in the case of an emergency). So they presumably don't have a right to enter that they can extend to the police.

A few searches say that the landlord cannot consent to the search. A sample result:

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/landlord-give-consent...
Pretty much every Brunner novel I've read sucks, though I've not read The Sheep Look Up or Stand on Zanzibar. From what I recall after reading a few (whose titles I do not remember) the important thing for Brunner is that everything come out badly, no matter how contrived or tortured the plot becomes to achieve that end. It makes his work boring and predicable, as well as despressing, and the contrivance is unartful and awkward.

Brunner hated the possibility that technology might solve any problems: he was opposed to Cold Fusion before it became obvious it was nonsense because he thought it would enable cheap, easy, consumption with a small environmental footprint, so people like him wouldn't be able to tell the rest of us how aweful we were for enjoying ourselves. There is a great deal of Puritanism in his work.

With regard to these "predictions" I have to agree with the assessment that failed predictions are being touted as successful ones. Fuel cells are not batteries, for example. And the US is hardly "beset by terrorists": that is simply proganda by the security-industrial complex. There have been terrorist incidents, but far more people have been killed in the excessive and poorly thought out response to those incidents (the invasion and occupation of Iraq in particular) than were killed in them.

Likewise, extrapolating that Europe would be united when there was a blueprint and long term plan already underway to do this is not a great leap of the imagination. It's more curious that American SF authors tended to see the world as either having a single government or a bipolar distribution of power rather than a multi-polar world, which has long been more probable.
Depth of field, though, is limited by the sensor's dimensions, which is drastically different between film and digital. A 35mm film equivalent digital camera is already a pretty expensive "full-frame", a mid-format digital cameras are available at the price of a mid-luxury car and large format digital is not available for a consumer at all.
Rule 110 might also be of interest to people as Turing completeness has been proven for it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110
Ask HN: Looking for landing page reviews
Recently launched a landing page for our app doctant: a non-complex approach to writing, publishing, and collaborating on technical documentation.

Any feedback on the landing page / idea would be awesome!

http://www.doctant.com
Code completion is already integrated, plus documentation for all the WP functions in the IDE. You can search the codex straight from the IDE or see all the details of a WordPress function by clicking on it in the code.
"Microsoft and Amazon were under pricing cloud to kill competition"

Who can forget the stories of Microsoft offering their browser for free in order to cut off Netscapes air supply:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_McGeady
FYI you've replied to the wrong comment (presume aimed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9400544)
I've recorded my vinyl onto the computer. It sounds the same as the vinyl :-)
Turbopumps powered by rocket fuel require quite a bit of plumbing and design work; you're essentially building a second rocket motor to drive the bigger one. By using an electric turbopump, you just need a place to put the motor and batteries, which is a lot more simple in comparison.
Got the same problem here.

I worked in a a few companies, but the only skilled people there who could have mentored me didn't have the time.
http://www.doctant.com
I know what a natural monopoly is and I'm not arguing that Google search is a natural monopoly. Government regulation is not aimed only at natural monopolies. The authority for the government to regulate interstate commerce isn't based on whether a natural monopoly exists or not.

There are natural monopolies that aren't strictly regulated. And there are industries that aren't natural monopolies that are strictly regulated.

The key is to examine the potential harm and the desired outcomes.

>Develop a superior algorithm and you're in the game.

That is entirely possible (or it might not be [1]). It doesn't change the fact that right now and for the foreseeable future, Google is the gatekeeper to the internet.

Right now Google directly controls the destiny of millions of people. One minor algorithm change can (and has) wiped out the fortunes of thousands of companies.

[1]Android market share could easily become high enough that Google could retain their monopoly even with inferior search technology.
Ask HN: Should I pay my DE franchise taxes?
A little over a year ago, I prematurely formed a Delaware C Corp for my startup. I realized a month ago that I was supposed to pay DE franchise taxes of $400 in 2014 - oops.

So I'm currently 1+ year delinquent on those, and 1 month delinquent on my 2015 franchise taxes. About $900 in total.

My startup is broke and there's a 75% I'll have to either shut it down or put it on hold within 3 months. Should I keep delaying the tax payments for now?
anonymous communities tend towards being a cesspool after they reach a certain size. small anonymous communities are often great
He's saying that the Github link on http://making.teawithstrangers.com/ is broken. It currently points to http://making.teawithstrangers.com/github
Could be, but historically things have leaned towards "we are not special" and it seems like a good working assumption to continue with that. Despite previous thought, we're not really any different from animals, animals aren't really different from other forms of life, living matter isn't really different from non-living matter, our planet isn't really different from other planets, our star isn't really different from other stars, etc. That obviously doesn't prove that life is a common thing, but in the absence of better info, it gives a decent starting place.

There's also the fact that life arose on Earth almost immediately after conditions allowed for it. If it were an extremely rare event then there likely would have been some lag. Again, not conclusive, but suggestive.
Only on a Saturday would this make it to the top of HN.
See also chronic fatigue, where people reject entirely any psychological help. And if someone's CFS is treated, cured, by a psychological treatment, well, they were faking it.

(This has pretty much been said on HN before.)
> There's a difference between clicking a link (where "open in default browser" is the obvious behavior, and there's no advantage to forcing any particular browser) and searching for an address (where it makes sense to recognize an address and offer special handling, such as displaying a map, or directions).

Clearly, there is a competitive advantage in controlling the browser, or Google would not have spend so much money in giant billboards in the Paris subway to explain how Chrome was better than anything.

> So what, precisely, would you suggest Google or another search engine do in that case to continue providing a good user experience?

Agree with map service vendors on a standard API, and make it possible in the settings to select the service to handle an address search. You know, competition and all that.
Thank you. I really did think that and even start to read the history of Red Hat...
How we data-mine related tech skills
If the first request errored, you can error on the second one as well. I don't see the problem.
Maybe someone should setup a database linking Key: <type of library> with Value: <list of libraries that do some thing>, sorted by rank voted on by the community.
Sure, but it's such an odd design choice that one can't help but wonder why, even if it was for fun only.
Suicide Linux (2011)
Conversely, the ability of people to get almost any peice of information at any time anywhere has wiped out a vast number of traditional plot devices, which makes things surprisingly difficult for the modern story-teller. It has opened up new landscapes, but because communication and knowlege are so easy now the kinds of stories we can tell in them are very different.

My own "living in the future" story: I have a number of friends who have family involved in the space program, including a couple of astronauts. I was hiking with one a few years ago and she commented on a big family gathering at Thanksgiving, mentioning, "Of course so-and-so wasn't there because he's on the space station." It just made me pause and take stock, while the ten-year-old me did backflips because I was living in the future, and it was good.
It's from the internet "80's" :)
I rode a bike that I rescued from the dump for over a year. Besides a new chain, tubes and loving maintenance it was a nice solid 70s era bike. I swear it was made out of iron pipe. Oddly, it came with track drop bars.
I would say first, have accomplished something that shows your potential.
A few weeks ago around 100 people spontaneously met in Alamo Square park in SF. Someone brought hundreds of roses to give out to everyone else in the park. Super cool.

TWS is a great crew of people, and Ankit's a great community leader. Both the normal small group events, and the rare big community ones have only been positive.

You should go to one and if it seems like your... cup of tea... consider becoming a host
Leaving a negative, zero-opportunity home environment with about $200 in my pocket and putting myself and my wife through college, university and grad school while working full-time in career progressing employment that's gotten me involved in deeply impactful work.

After years of skirting close to poverty and receiving no help from either of our families, and coming out more educated and wealthy than anybody in my family history, through nothing but determination, hard work and a few sprinkles of luck. I now own a great home, in a fantastic neighborhood, am almost debt free (house and all). But being able to also enjoy life at the same time, to follow some of my passions, travel, enjoy food and art and wine.

I've now found myself in a position where I've done the career, and I'm backing off a bit to relax, learn and enjoy pure simple work for a change.

The life I live in now has exceeded any possible life I ever expected to live as a child. I'm incredibly proud of it.
Most people don't have the time or will to mentor someone outside of their jobs (for free). So the best way in this industry to get mentoring is to intern at different companies, where someone is responsible for your growth.
Sometimes a mentor is not someone that you will meet in person...
The entire Internet is my mentor. This site has taught me more things that I can number. Choose a good list of sites and invest your time in high open source quality software. If you will turn out to be one of the best programmers, you will discover that most of the work you had done, will be the work that you did alone. If you emulate others you will be only a robot. The highest point will be the one when you will turn around and you will see the mountains you built alone...
Ahhh... Using the term webmaster, brings back memories.
It's hard. I know. The best way to find a mentor is put yourself out there. Ask individuals if they'd be willing to mentor you.
Thank you for the response. However, that is exactly my point. Orders of magnitude, plural, means the rocket will be 1% of the current cost. That means a $61 million rocket is on the order of $610,000.

I do not believe that raw material procurement and manufacturing account for 99% of current launches or 97% or 90%. Even if it did, I believe there would be significant amount devoted to quality inspections and testing before you could trust a used rocket that not only fired, but impacted the ground to be used again.
I think your division of things discussed into "true facts" and "opinion" is not particularly subtle, but let's run with it.

Most of what is discussed falls into the latter category, opinion. That includes things very relevant to people's lives, like who enjoys equal protection under the law. Approaching a conversation about a topic of social justice as if it's as simple, clear, and verifiable as Newtonian mechanics is the wrong approach. XKCD lampooned that here:

https://xkcd.com/793/

I'd add that even science isn't as clear as you make it out to be. Newtonian mechanics weren't really true; they were just an approximation adequate to the time. As Box writes, "all models are wrong, but some are useful." It took us a few hundred years to understand their limits. Out that struggle came quantum mechanics and relativity. Of that transition, Max Planck wrote, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

So as much as we'd like to pretend that science proceeds differently, it is also a social process. Kuhn's, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is the standard place to start reading about that, but there's now a large body of literature on the anthropology of science.
Agreed. Banks was basically writing fantasy-horror, and while beautifully written the Culture novels I've read are one long litany of awfullness, despite the essentially utopian setting.
That is really cool, I know some really good people that I hope I can help some day too
Getting the wisdom is not the problem - getting the right wisdom in the right dose at the right time, is. That's what a mentor is for. The internet does not provide this.
FalcorJS: Watch Us Live-Code a Mini-Netflix with FalcorJS and Angular 2