skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Try a cookbook like Bittman's How to Cook Everything Fast. Practical recipes+instructions on when to prep/cook/prepare other parts of a meal. There's also a couple chapters in the beginning that go over basic kitchen skills and what to stock in your home (oils, herbs, equipment) which can be useful.

Cooking For Engineers (http://www.cookingforengineers.com/) used to be one of my big favorites in that planning aspect but I haven't seen an update in years, sadly.

My current favorite place to get recipes/cooking knowledge - but requires basic cooking skills in the first place - is anything from Kenji from Serious Eats. Usually all my questions and thoughts will be addressed in some of the super-in-depth guides, like the sous vide steak one and the chocolate chip cookie one. http://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab
Indeed, I'd agree with both of you in that I can do a large number of other tasks off the top of my head, but not Tic-Tac-Toe, even though given a fair bit of time to do that "coercing", it's not extremely difficult. However, I'd also agree with kasey_junk's position that this type of problem doesn't quite measure what they think it does, and the "ease" of the problem is really irrelevant. What we should be looking at is the efficacy of the test: does it measure what we think it measures? Does it successfully differentiate between good and bad candidates?

Gonna kinda ramble off here for a second...

I have an intern at my day job now, and we're working through a task I've done a million times. I know how I'd do it, and I could finish the whole thing in about an hour, but I want him to go through all the steps on his own. He's been working on it for over a week, and today he came up with a bunch of possible solutions to a particular obstacle, and he said, "Which one is the right one to do?" And honestly, the answer is that there isn't one right way to go. All of those solutions will work, and at various times in the past, I've tried them all.

What I'm getting at is that I think OP is correct that getting the "right" answer isn't super important.

To take another rather poor analogy, look at Google Maps. If I type in "642 Harrison St, San Francisco, CA", then it drops me at a particular point on the map that just so happens to be an office building. There is no 644 Harrison St, but if I type it into Google, they drop a pin right next to the building, anyway. The interesting thing about this is that Google doesn't care exactly where the building is. Instead, they want to get me close enough to my destination that I can eyeball it and figure out the rest myself.

To put that another way, the "right" answer would be "there's no building here," but Google correctly identifies the problem as "how do I get to this physical spot?" and not "is this a real place?"

Likewise, in a lot of areas of life, not just programming and maps, getting the "right" answer isn't necessarily the only answer. For most things, if you get within a certain range, with a certain margin of error, then that's good enough. If you ask for a medium-rare steak and it comes out medium, it's still gonna taste good, just not perfect. If you run a marathon but wind up walking for 2 minutes in the middle of it, you still covered the distance, even though you technically only ran 98%. If you have a meeting at 3:00 and you arrive at 3:02 or 2:58, it's gonna be fine.

For most things, there's a certain amount of "close enough" that is acceptable.

Does it really matter if 644 Harrison St exists or not? Of course not. Google gets me to that location, and I am able to do the rest from there. Does it really matter if your ASCII spiral is perfect? No, but as long as you demonstrate your mastery of arrays and for-loops and basic algebra, you should pass the test.

At least, that's my two cents.
The 9 Habits of Highly Effective Restaurants
Git by diff
Nice. This is reminiscent of HyLang[1], which is like this for Python.

[1]: http://hylang.org/
Wait! That's the one. I had forgotten.
Retiring Tesla CFO describes what it was like working for Elon Musk
In comparison to a toaster oven though, a lot of the non-smart functionality is moot. Even a middling toaster oven should offer a lot of the same savings/convenience, and a top-of-the-line one is a tenth of the MSRP (e.g. http://www.brevilleusa.com/the-smart-oven-pro.html).
If you use regular hardware you'd have to worry about bits getting flipped by radiation, which could cause some big problems depending on what your server is doing. Unfortunately radiation-resistant hardware is super expensive (maybe not a problem) and super slow (probably a problem)
Also:

"The Bible is the source of liberty" - (not) Thomas Jefferson.

He seems to be a real common target to lend support to a claim. I think that says something about the mythology around the American Founding Fathers.
This piece hinges on the premise that "not filthy rich" is the same as "poor", and goes on a tirade from there. Is it really that controversial to state that you shouldn't buy what you can't afford?
A more interesting thing would be to understand how the mis-attribution occurs in the first place (and who is at the origin of it).
A lot of what she says is true, but a lot of it is cultural and transcends borders. If you go up to frugal places in new england, putting on airs will not get you too far... but in other places, more flashy places, it helps.

But this phenomenon is certainly not only American or essentially white. You can go to Japan and you can go to urban coastal china and contrast that with rural china. Or you can go to Nigeria and contrast Lagos with people not from Lagos.

The signaling and the the appearances are not either uniquely american nor are they borne from mainstream american culture. It's pretty much semi-universal.

On the other hand, poor people in China and Japan will try to look as presentable as possible while being quite frugal.

This whole thing brings up a pet peeve of mine and that's the "cultural fit" meme one finds so pervasive in the valley. It's as if someone who has a Motorola 'culture' is a bad 'fit' for working at Cloudera, to make something up.

None the less, you see people slurping up the corporate culture du jour as if a 'jobdesiac'. You could imagine how if essentially mainstream engineers can be categorized as bad cultural fits just from one company to the next, how slightly different cultures would have even more pronounced experiences due to discrepancy.
Mathematician theorizes what happened to MH370
Android version won't have the free tier that the other systems have
"So Abbott and her husband walked into Buddy’s this past winter, hoping to replace the old sofa in their trailer, six years old, its wiring poking through the bottom, cutting gashes into the living room floor."

The easy and cheap option if you have springs poking into the floor is buy a sheet of MDF for $9.25[0] and a 20" hand saw for $20 (or less) [1] and the spring-destroying-the-floor problem is fixed for under $30.

It breaks my heart that these folks are so financially illiterate that they dig themselves into such terrible debt.

[0] http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded-1-8-in-x-4-ft-x-8-ft-S2...

[1] http://www.homedepot.com/p/Stanley-20-in-Saw-20-029L/1002432...
> One example, widely misattributed to Leonardo da Vinci:

Whoever believes that in the first place is also mistaken that such concepts/wording as "sophistication" actually existed at the time.
I "love" how a guy making 4x with no children is giving advice to people making a lot less WITH children. Completely different worlds.
I don't think you've read the article.
> Appeal to authority isn't fallacious if the authority appealed to is, you know, actually an authority.

It is fallacious in any way, because it detracts the argument by imposing the view of someone else without the need of justification.
"They claim that it'll recognize the food when you put it in, and prepare it to your requested style based on their computer vision and machine learning algorithms."

Speed & energy, maybe. Simple, no. Computer + Oven = Computer. [0] The potential for cognitive friction is high for Homo Sapiens.

[0] A play on the Alan Cooper question: "Q. What do you get when you cross a computer with a (Foo)? A. Computer" -- Inmates running the Asylum, pp 3-14.
The thing is that the three dots that lay "outside the range were the other dots are" (not the "true" range which we of course don't know) have a higher impact on the conclusion than the amount of them justifies. That's why taking them out should not harm but help. This is not the same as taking datasets out of a medical study because they got sick by the new medicine. E.g., if you look at the left diagram. The upward swing in the red curve is probably the result of all the left points (199 points). But the downward trend is as far as I can see the result of 1 point on the right. So can we trust that downward trend as much as the upward trend? Probably not. Additionally removing the two dots at the 150 meetings point might result in the curve not having such a strong incline, but one that is backed by 196 points.

I really don't have more than basic education in statistics, but to me it looks like a slight but constant upward trend until 100 investors contacted and after that we simply don't have enough data. If you think about what the diagram talks about getting a constant upward line or even more likely a square root shaped line is very likely. Getting a bell curve is unlikely, just from thinking about the topic. What should happen that contacting more than X investors would result in less meetings?

In the second diagram removing the two dots at $4.5m and the two dots above 200 investors met leaves us with 196 data points that show a fairly equal spread and that the amount of investors contacted might not influence that much how much money you get in the end. That's also good because it's expected to find that company evaluation depends on company value (customers, market, team, etc) and not on how many investors you contact.

You make the data more conclusive by removing data points that have a big impact on your results without the backup of other data points. That's what handling outliers is.
Call me closed-minded, but with a title like that I'm not clicking, and I don't want to see this post on HackerNews. It's just mean.

When I was a kid I was all "oh, I can separate the artist from their art", but as an old man... fuck that.
We already had that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9687696
> no MVP

It seems there are still phases you could do. Instead of trying to bring up an entire constellation at once doing two-way communications covering the entire globe, you could start with just a few broadcast-only satellites. Not competitive with at my house in urban North America where wifi and LTE is ubiquitous, but that's never going to be your market anyway.

The receiver on the ground is going to have to be specialized hardware anyway, so build in a battery and a real time clock so it can wake itself up when one of the satellites is in range, and then record everything the satelite is transmitting. Send the entire contents of Wikipedia once a week, send technical manuals, send the week's news, Windows updates, Linux distros; the Internet is so ubiquitous these days but fast access to it is still elusive in remote parts of the world.

This wouldn't have been useful in 2000 but 15 years later, a box with an wifi access point and a 1 TB hard drive chock full of information that's relatively up to date?

Not as cool as "internet anywhere in the world", but a start. Phase in delayed 2-way communication next, reusing the physical antenna from version 1; adding more satellites as you go.

Of course, 15 years later, the cost of putting 1 kg in orbit has also shrunk, and having a WiFi-capable computer in my pocket to look up information on is "normal" - which wasn't so, 15 years ago.
Both parties are supposed to gain additional utility from any trade or it doesn't happen. That's not to say that both parties gain utility from any trade that could be made (obviously), and there's nothing that implies an infinitude - just a difference in how much people value different things.

Of course, past Econ 101, we also get into issues of people making trades they think will be beneficial but aren't.
I've skimmed through it after the blatant straw man in the first paragraph, which prompted me to post. I might read it later if the resulting discussion on HN is interesting :-)

edit: downvote away, but I doubt I'm alone in feeling turned off by this kind of clickbaity behavior
If you read the article, you'll see that the author actually agrees with you. They just picked a clickbait-y headline because that's What People Do These Days.
By far the best article I read today. Thank you for sharing.
I like how this article is written, but I don't think many of the "unneeded expensive buys" help to climb the ladder.

I think most of it is to feel better.

If you like your job and most of the other parts of your life, you spent less money to feel better.

But if nobody gives you a good job and you don't have much time left for the rest of your life, you get the impression that you have to buy happiness.

Can't blame those people. Did it myself for years.
The Star Wars Movie in ASCII Characters
There are many different paths by which user can access the contents of your web app. For high performance apps, you'll want to optimize this process. Here are two suggestions:

- Use a CDN to serve static content without the need to serve the content out of the origin server every request.

- Create instances of your application in multiple regions. The shortest path to your web app varies based on where the user is in the world. Multiple regions can minimize the latency introduced via the hops s/he must make.
Well, actually its working out fine atm, thank you :)

There even was a article linked here about USA student coming to germany for education this week. It said that most of them stay. Turns out if you spend like 5 of your formative years at one place, you kind of build roots there. So maybe an attractive education system can actually help securing talent.

There even was a statement by a german official which roughly said that they are very happy with the current state of affairs, having the international exchange. If things get too out of hand, tuition fees for foreign students will be explored as an option though.
How useful can a programmable desktop robotic arm can be?
Hello all,
I was thinking of developing a desktop size programmable robotic arm which is better than already existing servo based arms. I could only come up with a very few application for it though.

I am just trying to take others opinion before spending more time developing it.(what do you think about the idea ?)
Also, please feel free to list the possible applications you can think of.

Thank you.
Somehow I think truth might be somewhere between "Poor people are making rational decisions to consume status goods in the hopes of improving their economic outcomes by convincing gatekeepers that they are, in fact, middle class" and "Poor people are spending $2,500 on handbags because poor people value handbags more than they value $2,500."

Case in point: there is no conceivable narrative by which one's sofa gets one welfare benefits or a new job as a shift lead. Poor people apparently are quite aware of this. When asked (in the article referenced by a sibling thread), the young lady's answer to "Why did you buy a sofa?" answer was "Because I wanted a sofa."
Show HN: Fetchnotes re-design with Stylebot
The website is down right now. https://github.com/mozilla/sweet.js
"A logically valid argument from authority grounds a claim in the beliefs of one or more authoritative source(s), whose opinions are likely to be true on the relevant issue." [0]

"The appeal to authority is a fallacy of irrelevance when the authority being cited is not really an authority." [1]

"Appealing to authority is valid when the authority is actually a legitimate (debatable) authority on the facts of the argument." [2]

[0] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

[1] http://www.skepdic.com/authorty.html

[2] http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci...
This article connects the virtue of appearing professional to overspending on luxury goods as if they are identical.

I'm reminded of the "chav" subculture in Britain and their love of Burberry. (Extreme example: http://i.imgur.com/8QxFSh5.jpg) I don't get the feeling that they're trying to open doors to the British upper-class, but rather using it as a status-symbol within their own community.

Personally I don't see anything wrong with that; everyone wants to look good for their peers. But I feel like the author is trying to make it more noble than it is.
Oh, this stuff is fun. In high school, I made a WScript that prompted user "Network timed out on line #6. Please re-enter password:" and would surreptitiously record it. I put this on a floppy, popped it in when someone in the library went to the printer, waited, came back and said, "sorry forgot my floppy; can i get it, excuse me". Didn't use it maliciously; usually would just modify the folder settings on their home drive on the network to have repeating images of Pokemon as a background image. I suppose this all sounds quite devious in writing.
Lol, here I am googling 'astu' as well after watching the show.

But @MarcScott - remember, you can read a file in a directory that you dont have +r on if you know the filename, as long as you have +x to change into that dir ;)
I was hoping it will refer to how being poor and in debt can impact your cognitive abilies: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/29/us-poverty-brain-i...
I totally agree: if you can't afford it, don't buy it. But I also understand the argument in the article that unnecessary luxury items CAN be unlock certain doors in life. However, i have the feeling that most people do these irrational purchases only for the purpose of showing off.
You may not fall for this -- but a good section of non-technical people would. Harvesting is not an exaggeration.
Quotation marks would serve to clarify the voice of the article, yet they would weaken the message of the article.

The Logic of "Stupid Poor People"

As an old man, I learned something by clicking on that.
From my experience, implementing a programming language can be easier to grasp when doing it backwards, that is: back end -> front end. I can recommend The BNF Converter (http://bnfc.digitalgrammars.com/), which is a tool that generates the front end (C, C++, C#, Haskell, Java, or OCaml) from BNF grammar. Writing a back end gives you pretty clear big picture of how different parts work and relate to each other. When you have that you can write the front end with this vision.

Obviously, this is only my experience, but I thought of sharing, since in almost every compiler course I've seen everything starts with writing the front end. I still have a very, very limited experience and knowledge, but after I learn more about implementing PL/writing compilers, I see it everywhere.
> switched to the native sort when a partition becomes small enough

Isn't that exactly what they are doing?

>> Our approach was simply to prefer the native implementation unless working in IE8 or with arrays over a thousand items.
A good section of non-technical people would fall for the same thing if presented from any random website in Safari (especially with iOS's predilection towards random password popups from background processes...). Not trying to downplay the issue, just provide some perspective.
The creator held a talk about simulations at JSConf.Asia 2014. Highly recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HJPilemNns
I'm single, gay, in Chicago, just hit my thirties, one very good relationship, a few shorter / smaller ones. I'm not great at dating, and I'm in a field that isn't exactly drenched in outgoing gay guys (academic computer science), but here are somethings that have been working well for me:

* Cooking. Not only is it a practical thing you can offer in a relationship, but its also a great way to meet someone. Invite three friends over for dinner, tell them to each bring a someone you don't know. Everyone meets a bunch of new people that likely aren't creeps (since they're at least a friend's friend), you can share something you're learning with them, and even if no one there is gay, they might know someone else who is.

* Join a club. Volunteering is a great thing for this, and volunteering in something you care about. In Chicago (where I live) we have a gay community center called the Center on Halsted. They know that lots of the people volunteering are doing so to meet friends / romantic partners / etc. So there are lots and lots of volunteer opportunities for lots of interests (safe sex promotion, working with the elderly, working with gay homeless youth, etc.)

* Work less. On one hand I know where you're coming from when you say there are too many demands on your time. But on the other hand, what you're also saying is that "all the demands on your time you're accepting are more important than your romantic life." Straight up refuse to work two nights a week and join a gay running club, find a meet up or two that you're sincerely interested in and can become a regular at, etc.

* Get more comfortable saying no. This was the hardest thing for me. I was crazy lonely for a long time, and so whenever I went on a date, I felt like saying "thanks, but I don't feel a connection" was tantamount to saying "thanks, but I'd rather be alone forever." And since I felt I couldn't say no to someone once I started dating them, I didn't say yes to anyone either (since one date felt like it "implied" 100). Surprisingly, feeling less anxious, feeling more comfortable saying no, made it a whole lot easier to say "yes" and try out lots of new possible relationships.

* Therapy? This has been huge for me, not for any particular trauma or issue, but just in a million small ways. I just saw below you saying something like "being gay sucks, especially if you want a monogamous relationship". I'm of course (totally possibly wrongly) reading myself into your comment, so take this with a mega grain of salt, but that sounds like the result of some inner struggle / insecurity stuff, maybe around sexuality. I had that attitude for a long time at least, and thats were it was coming from for me.

Anyway, shit, just wrote a book by accident. Shoot me a message if you wanna talk more man. Guess reading your comment reminded me of myself a lot…
ah interesting. My main concern when reading this was latency, which has traditionally been crap with satellite ISP. In todays world i also feel that once you have a certain bandwidth (say 10-20Mbps) the benefits of a latency of <50ms vs 200ms outweigh those of more bandwidth because literally everything, from loading web content, chatting, making calls, realtime anything, is more responsive.

So the latency being so much better with this (hopefully) excites me :)
I was going to write a diatribe about how my sister-in-law manages to get a three bedroom semi in Berkshire in the UK, has a nice 60" television and an iphone 6 and hasn't worked a day since 1998 nor has her numerous partners, her physically disabled 15 year old son (who incidentally managed to scale a 7 foot tall wall because he couldn't be bothered to walk around the house to go and buy cigarettes), sitting there with her friends last week all they discussed was how to screw more things out of the state whilst bathing in a cloud of smoke in the garden and simultaneously annoying their neighbours with loud garage music..

...but I'm sure the logic of this article explains that...

Actually they're not stupid. They're ruthless in some areas and its hard for me to sit there a a relative and not explode violently at them.

This post is somewhat an experiment however as reddit's UK population seems to think that this class of person doesn't exist and would happily downvote people off the internet for even suggesting it, labelling you as a tory supporter and general inhuman.