skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Funny, I'm writing this from my iPhone while on vacation in tahoe, nv. My first thought when gettng online was that the network qualtiy here is great, much better than sf.
I live in Honolulu, have a 3GS, and have no idea what all these “AT&T sucks” articles are about. Yeah, I think it’s a SF/NY thing, but y’all are the ones who control the media.
I think we agree on the basic point but my added qualifier really arises from my experience as a lawyer, where I have seen quite a few people over the years who never quite attain the ability to write really well because of intellectual limitations, though they can write at some level and though writing no doubts helps them develop the cognitive abilities they do have.
Epinions, CNet, and HowStuffWorks are also spam. Because they don't have any actual reviews, just lists of models, and a buying guide. (Although the domains themself are obviously not spam, just the results for this subject.)

ConsumerSearch and Consumer Reports are the only real results.
Wondrous Oddities: R's function call semantics [2006]
"Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame."

...since when did saving us from economic collapse become a problem? If this isn't an argument for at least partially decriminalizing drugs, I don't know what is.
Article discusses "spammers and cybercriminals" but uses the word "hackers". Fucking disgusting.
I don't get it. (caveat/disclaimer, I work at Facebook, and this is entirely and completely my opinion only. I did not work on the privacy settings project).

The process was as far as I can tell, _completely_ upfront. No dishonest changes were made. There has been considerable prior notice, huge amounts of press; the interface forced you to look at it and make your own choice, every reasonable privacy setting was made possible.

The default selection was based on users' previous settings where things mapped cleanly, and where they didn't/where it made sense, the recommendation the site made was to make more things public- because Facebook believes that's the best way to provide utility to the user. Which isn't outrageous- there are obvious features that would be bettered and enabled by having more sharing in the system.

Why is it deceitful/duping users then? Are you claiming that every software/website that shows you a EULA is cheating you into using the service?

This whole argument is based on the prejudice that (a) Facebook is out to be dishonest with their sharing practices (b) users are dumb (c) the best way to use the internet is to batten down the hatches and live in a bunker. I disagree with all of these.
Correct - he's referencing Tarski not Goedel.

Incorrect - Goedel is not much harder to prove or wider-ranging than Tarski.

Goedel is proven as a corollary to Tarski in Manin, Course In Mathematical Logic (Springer - http://www.amazon.com/Course-Mathematical-Logic-Graduate-Mat...)

Strongly recommend Manin to the mathematically literate interested in a sophisticated and worldly introduction to logic. Manin gives very understandable details of the Smullyan proof this guy is taking bits and pieces of.

-- And Antoly's "semantic/syntax" distinction is overdone.
I’ve heard this before, but is there any reason to think that the issue goes beyond the fact that CO2 has a higher natural level of radiation than H2O?
"
TFA says that it only changes your settings once you click through... but I have been getting new "friend requests" from people I have never heard of this weekend (since the change went into effect), I think because my profile and various other info had already been made public.
"

That is highly unlikely, and if so, it's a bug (and you should report it). The code looks up your privacy settings at display time, it doesn't make some sweeping database change.
No process is easy when step 1 is "form a bank".
Along the same lines, I had a professor who once said that you "can't have thoughts for that which you do not have words for". This refers more to vocabulary than writing, but I feel that there is some truth to it.

Although the author may overstate his case a little, I do think that the discipline of writing does force a person to learn how to articulate thoughts in a clear manner, which is always a good thing.
That is why there was a roadblock and a ton of information about the changes. No piece of software can help you if you're willfully ignorant.
Back in the day, Kyoto was laid out like SLC in order to copy the Chinese capital. Nowadays, they still have Number-jo, but it’s not as all encompassing.
+1

In fact, when you consider that the vast majority of hourly workers are probably grossly underpaid, it could even mean that hourly employees are less happy than salaried employees.
Denver Internet Marketing
eye9 Design is a Denver, Colorado web design firm specializing in web development, graphic design, and SEO for Colorado clients. Website developers Denver web designers.
It could be based off the same argument for why there are less polymaths now, and that's simply because we know too much. Politicians need to know more to achieve the same level of well-roundedness as they did in say, the 1700s.
Google seems intent to take it a step further: if you have something you want to hide don't post it on the internet at all.
And post 2008 as well.
An old English teacher of mine tried to convince us that you couldn't be bored if you didn't know the word "bored". You certainly can.

There are no words for the feelings many people have. We have a whole system of literature for this, which we call poetry.
So, my experience was the complete opposite to his. Had Facebook not forced me to view my privacy settings, I probably never would have. The settings they suggested were quite conservative and I definitely didn't feel as if they were trying to trick me into picking any particular privacy preference. At the end of it, I was actually appreciative of them.

How else would you have handled it? I think the way they dealt with it was the most upfront way. They couldn't have been more straightforward. It was in your face, and if you're the one who decided to skip over the privacy options they were making ridiculously accessible, then it's your fault.
u.s. nuclear reactors have always been safe: if a loss of coolant failure occurs the reaction is designed to slow down rather than speed up soviet cheronobyl style.

the concern is what to do with all the junk from processing\using fuel rods and depleted uranium besides dumping it on Iraqis via munitions.
Once again, boys and girls, Google is an algorithm, not a way of life.

It seems obvious yet profound at the same time.
This makes it sound like the ideal trajectory for a Stack Overflow user is "Answers a lot of questions, gets a new job, answers almost no questions", which I think is a little problematic.

That said, there are a lot of working arrangements in the world, and "spends almost all time working on assigned tasks" is just one of them. I get quite a bit of Internet karma (numerical and otherwise) while physically present at the day job, in downtime between tasks. My employers and I have an understanding on this: they treat me like an adult and let me manage my own use of time, I keep earning all the gold stars they stick onto my productivity evaluations.

("Has time to X" is not a measurement of productivity. It is a poor proxy for productivity, which is probably being used because management is not competent at actually measuring productivity. If you actually measure productivity, and the numbers say that Engineer X is 40% more productive than the company average, and you think "That's funny, he seems to have time to update his blog and check Facebook in between reading on new Javascript techniques and, oh yeah, there might have been some coding involved", then you know what that tells you? That Engineer X is 40% more productive than the company average.)
Boredom isn't a thought, it's a feeling. As for having thoughts you don't have words for, people do it all the time, and you just make up a new word for it, it's how language evolved.
facebook has very fun games! the best is footbattle!
http://apps.facebook.com/footbattle?zref=ntptfb
I have translated the procedures from OpenOffice to R (didn't bother bounding the date-range where the fitting is done, so I get worse fit and bit more variation; you can only replicate so many mistakes before you feel dirty): http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2009/12/cru-graph-yet-again-w...
Those "instincts" are looking like someone's ego dominating over everyone else in the company.
Are they going to turn Facebook into a really big "reverse catalog" company. By that I mean instead of grouping goods into a catalog and sending to one person, you send one good to a lot of people (via Facebook) with the added requirement that the good in question matches with the "preferences" of the Facebook person? Would be interesting to see if that works.
Fractional reserve banking refers to banks holding only a fraction of their deposits in the form of liquid reserves, and lending out the rest.

The scheme in the article is about borrowing $9b from the Fed with $1b equity at a low rate, and then selling it to the government for a higher rate. So it's straight up interest-rate arbitrage.

In fact there's not even a claim in the article that the $1b in equity are deposits, so this bank is most likely not even a commercial bank. For all intents and purposes, this appears to be an investment bank, and it's very unlikely that it'd even have an account with the Fed to borrow that kind of money.
If you had a professional facebook account, you would also have a better grip over your profiles on other services. You would never abandon a username associated with your online identity.

Much more important to professionals is the risk of phishing or breaking into accounts.
I use a Blackberry, and when I select news.yc from my history, it automatically puts http://www in front of it, and I have to remove it every time.
Agreed and I'd wholly agree with the general point of "if you don't create, you don't think".

Humans by nature are data processing machines, our entire life is just data. We remember images because we have saved a biological jpeg in our brain, we remember words and sentences because we've got text and audio biologically saved. However it's the act of creating that distinguishes thought from action.

When I write, or draw, or create a song I am creating something new. I'm creating data that has in essence never existed before. It's not a hard coded biological function and it's not something everybody does.

The act of creating shows our distinction as individuals, and perhaps prove to ourselves and others that we're not just p-zombies faking our way through life.
incomplete combustion\plenty of other stuff in the ground in it(heavy metals etc.). The smoke is not just CO2.

Plus " sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) are the primary causes of acid rain. In the US, About 2/3 of all SO2 and 1/4 of all NOx comes from electric power generation that relies on burning fossil fuels like coal."
http://www.policyalmanac.org/environment/archive/acid_rain.s...

and acid rain causes a number of environmental problems.
Right, I'm not saying that AT&T isn't responsible or that people don't have good cause to be dissatisfied with them. All I'm trying to say is that it's possible that the root technical cause of the bad service issues isn't in AT&T's network, but in bad behavior from iPhones that manifests itself when you have a large concentration of them in one area.
The process was misleading. The default selection was based on users' previous settings only if they had changed them in the past, and as Facebook has pointed out, only 20% of people have done so. That forces the rest of users to make a choice that most neither understand nor want to make.

People see Facebook as a way to privately share their life with friends. That's the foundation on which Facebook was built - that's the core aspect that convinced people to abandon other social networks for FB - and now they are idiotically abandoning that core principal and needlessly exposing their users.

Personally, as a web app developer, I'm confused about the process myself. The privacy dialog seemed to suggest that no matter what my settings are, my name, profile picture, and friends list will be public to all. If I'm being given more choice about my privacy, why is this choice being taken away from me? Until this point, I had the choice of being pretty much invisible from anyone but my friends.

Back when people used Myspace, it was quite open by default as well. The difference is that on Myspace your name could be Donald Duck, your location could be set to Antarctica and nobody cared. You could invent your own privacy controls where they didn't exist. Try doing something that on Facebook and your account will be instantly suspended.

This is not about users being dumb or not. Many intelligent people don't know (or care to know) the intricate details of web apps.
Yeah, I've found it pretty easy and not confusing at all. Not only that, you can view what your profile looks like to different people.
Brains wanted: Digital Signage /Retail
I am looking for fresh ideas in digital signage: new technology platforms or marketing ideas, startups or established companies, as long as they a) are fresh b) offer new ways of integrating media c) create new experiences for consumers while they shop, or new benefits for business (retail or brands). This is not an academic question.
Agree - I didn't have all my settings defaulted to _everyone_ - there were a few, but for the most part the "new" settings were the same as the old ones.

What really did piss me off, however, was the re-classification of my profile picture and friends list as publicly-available information. Maybe I'm misreading the policies, but it seems like there's now no way to not share/make available to third-party apps my picture and friends list - which I previously didn't share with any non-friends.
Indeed. Evidence shows that users understood the changes - 50% of users select something besides the defaults, and Facebook has been open with those numbers. This is after millions of users in countries like Turkey already had effectively public profiles.

An average user, certainly, has no idea what is going on by these changes.

He ignored the public stats in order to make a point.

Further, this change is important, and there was a lot of work and testing to make sure people understood the results. Jason assumes his intuition about what users understand is more accurate than this research.

In other words, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
All of the above is purely syntactic, meaning it has to do with rules that govern how symbols are written on the paper, and there's no need for any interpretation of what the symbols mean.

At least this much was shown in original post; All proofs Goedel's theorem rely on the ability of a very particular language to be self-describing. Thus you cannot have "any system" but rather must a particular system, one "at least a powerful as arithmetic", one which is self-describing.

And this is where Anatoly's false distinction between "syntactic" and "semanitc" proofs breaks down. The proof of Goedel's theorem relies on these mechanics (one's ability to create Goedel numbering or the equivalent), these semantics of arithmetic. There is no Goedel's theoreom for Tarrot Cards because Tarrot Card don't have a set of rules which allow them to be self-describing.
You know, I never really understood the fuss because well you can just fork the freaking thing. But what you cover in your analysis that you link to, I never though of it that way. It is kind of "Pricky" to sell the thing no conditions to Sun and then when you are not a party to the secondary transaction, do a bunch of hand-waving.
Clojure Roundup: FlightCaster (YC S09), Crane, Incanter, Leiningen
Isn't there an issue of time sensitivity here? Suppose the paper is supposed to start showing up at 6 PM. You need a few hours to start printing papers, so let's say all articles have to be in by 2 PM. Then you need time to let people write articles and analysis and whatnot. So you wouldn't really be reporting on things that happened during the day - it would only really be events that happened in the morning in the US, late at night in Asia and towards the end of the day in Europe. Seems to me that there's not enough of a market for that..
Even current versions of PostgreSQL implement UPDATE and DELETE as 'write the new values to the first unused row'. These days the database will VACUUM stale rows in the background automatically, rather than waiting for you to do it yourself. but the fundamental concept is still there.
It's this type of crap that causes a promising idea like Facebook to turn into a has-been in a matter of years because of mass flight of users.

It's this kind of flailing around trying to figure out what kind of business to be that gives another company an opportunity to learn from Facebook's mistakes and then enter the market and seize Facebook's market share. The trick for the next new entrant is to figure out how to monetize less clueless company behavior.
I think this is "his" javascript library (can't find his name mentioned anywhere though): http://www.cinsoft.net/mylib.html
LFSAW is much more musical than some of the tracks from Japanese noise artists that I've heard.
http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes

He uses the mammogram statistics as an example to explain Bayes' Theorem.
Newspapers needs more than a small niche of audience to succeed. Just because the author gets warm feelings reading evening news and comics, doesn't mean there are many people who feels the same.

Newspapers are a dying breed not because they lack in depth analysis or quality of writing or lack of entertainment. NP are dying breed simply because its inconvenient.

If you already have cable tv and internet, NP is another way of getting the same news but much later when news has been beaten to death by other news source. Its not fast enough, you don't get instant update or instant follow-up. You have to wait for next day to get follow up on an interesting news, by the time you get update on that news; its already old stuff.

Comics and puzzle is not good enough to sell newspaper.

Newspaper has a special place in my childhood memory. I grew up reading multiple newspapers a day, waited anxiously for comics or movie reviews. It made sense then. There is a time and place for everything, the time for daily newspaper is coming to an end.
Yeh, the problem will be how to find them. If the saying "crisis equals opportunity" is true then it sounds like the internet is ready for a ycombinator type ranking system that's independent of a Google ranking system.
Happy iPhone user here in North Eastern US, but I think your logic (and the TFA's) is faulty:

It is completely possible that it is a problem with the iPhone, but one that is only visibly affecting the network when there's a high density of iPhones being used in a small geographical area.

It's like the whole controversial 'pre-fetch' setting on Fasterfox and other 'web accelerators'. It's fine for individual users, but it violates the contract of how network clients (browsers) are expected to act.

Once there's a sizable number of people using the technology it becomes a problem that affects everyone.

To say that the issues only occur in large metropolitan areas does not completely exclude the iPhone itself from being a contributing factor.
I worked at a hockey rink growing up, and the ice machines lay down a sheet of hot water after the auger scrapes off the top layer of old ice. I was always told the reasoning was that it froze faster... hardly scientific, but that's the standard in the rink-management world.
One of his quotes 'Every time a new browser version is released, anything built on them has to be re-tested due to an inexplicable reliance on the user agent string'.

Not really most libraries use feature testing, especially jQuery and John advocates feature testing in quite a few of his writings.
I've been all over SF and the bay area. No complaints with blackberry. I've never owned an iphone.
You're one click away from reviews on Epinions and HowStuffWorks. I'd say the same for CNet, except the first 3 dishwashers I clicked had no reviews, just a template dishwasher buying guide, and so I gave up. Of those three, only CNet comes close to spammy... but CNet's dishwasher buying guide is at least decently written.
A good question to put in the feature requests thread.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363
That's an excuse I'd accept for someone's everyday views: "eh, they probably never thought about it and just went with society's default."

When a philosopher sits down and writes about their perspective on a topic, it's a safe assumption that they thought about their conclusions before publishing them.
It's funny how much you can depend on Jeff loudly doing it wrong in public, for a rather wide variety of situations, and always learning the least lesson he can from his audience.
I don't think this piece is very well-argued. For one thing, I've been trying out a new android phone (my iPhone is on the back burner but I doubt I will be making a permanent switch) and the signal quality does seem to be a little better with the Android phone.

Many of the points rely on comparisons to other countries, but analytical people will recognize that problems can be caused by interactions in systems that otherwise work fine on their own too. For example, I had an old wireless router that worked fine with my Windows computers, but not with my Macbook Pro. But my Macbook Pro worked fine with other b/g access points. Without better information, how could we possibly tell which one is at fault? But Gruber (fanboy that he is) is drawing the conclusion that AT&T must be at fault.

As for the "Apple would have fixed it" assertion, or the question of why the number of complaints have gone up as iPhone users have, Gruber's blindness to his own biases is truly startling. You could as easily argue that AT&T has had three years to fix their network, so it must be Apple's fault because if the blame lay at AT&T's door it would have been fixed by now. And _of course_ the number of complaints will rise as iPhone users rise if the problem is some interaction between the iPhone specifically and AT&T's network: there are more iPhone users in existence to complain!

All in all this is very, very poorly done. I have no idea who's at fault but I do know that I won't be going to Gruber for anything more than entertainment if I'm reading about this whole fiasco.
How trusted is The Observer and guardian.co.uk?

I ask because dailymail.co.uk seems to be a very untrustworthy source.
Time will prove you right or wrong, but I believe that people will in general adapt to the way the web changes. I think it's a challenge to educate users so that you can have a featureful app without causing them harm, but I don't think it's impossible. The web populace has grown vastly more informed in just the last five years- why should we decide they won't be able to grasp this extra control?

Facebook is ambitious; it wants to be a lot of things. It wants to continue to be the service where you talk only to your friends, but it also wants to be other things. We believe we can do other things as well as we've done friend-only social networking. That may be a misjudgement, we'll find out.

Re: your friend list: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=197943902130

Re: The other settings that became publicly available- I think it was a call they made, balancing what is good for the network and what is reasonable for the individual on a social networking site. Some of it had to do with what privacy was feasible to enforce (given that you had to have Search on the site, and different levels of indexing etc), and I don't necessarily know all the details here.

The primary goal was to /simplify/ privacy settings, and make it more fine-grained, which they've clearly done.