Hacker News Reader

xrangeon The Difficulty of Untraining Drug Dogs How to Smell Marijuana

> red state prisons sit full of petty dime bag dealers

Does anyone know where to get at the raw statistics for this kind of information? So that we can figure out how many prisoners there are in red states vs. blue states for marijuana possession?

xrangeon More Americans Support Aid When Told Puerto Ricans Are U.S. Citizens

Another fun twist would be to see what effect there would be if you mentioned that no one from Puerto Rico voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

xrangeon More Americans Support Aid When Told Puerto Ricans Are U.S. Citizens

Anyone have a good estimate the total amount of money spent in the name of education in the U.S. in the last 50 years? I'd be interested to see the total pre-k through university graduate school, including both public (local, state, federal) and private.

xrangeon Basic Income Research Proposal

That sounds awfully static. The interesting thing will be to see if people with unconditional money end up becoming addicts at higher rates. Are the study researchers planning on making the data openly available? Is it going to be cash payments, or will it be some sort of debit card where the researchers can track whether people are spending money at grocery stores, or at casinos?

xrangeon Non-determinism: a sublanguage rather than a monad

Does GHC still come with a copy of GCC and Perl? Hugs is pretty small:

https://www.haskell.org/hugs/

xrangeon Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack

Just to make sure that we aren't all talking past each other...

1. I assume the FBI is investigating the hack itself (who did it, etc.). Citation?

2. I assume the SEC is investigating the suspicious timing the executives who were selling stock before the announcement. I'd also assume it could turn into a criminal investigation. Cite?

3. The class action suit is a civil action asserting that Equifax was negligent (that's what the Bloomberg article that these comments are currently pointing to is about).

4. There could be criminal negligence in securing their networks. It seems like that could be either of a Federal or state issue. Anyone know if this investigation would take place with the FBI, or if there is another federal agency which would take the lead on that?

xrangeon Rural America Is Building Its Own Internet Because No One Else Will

You are right. The sheriff that covers Ryegate, MT commutes in every day from New York City, and the school bus drivers commute from Seattle, likewise the mailman commutes in from D.C., and the garbage man from San Francisco.

xrangeon Blum: “The proof is wrong. I shall elaborate precisely what the mistake is.”

Interesting. I'd like to learn more about this. Any pointers to how other languages and cultures don't distinguish between math and science? Does it apply to other things like the difference between induction and deduction as well?

xrangeon Blum: “The proof is wrong. I shall elaborate precisely what the mistake is.”

Here's an utterly trivial question. Do most people working on computational problems like this consider themselves mathematicians or scientists?

xrangeon Linear Algebra for Deep Learning: Matrix Algebra

The Strang book: "Introduction to Linear Algebra" does seem to have quite a few "high quality" 1-star reviews. They mostly seem to cluster around this book not being good for a linear algebra introduction, for someone new to the field. Typical comments:

"It seems the reviewers who think this book is wonderful for non-math majors are math majors!"

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Linear-Algebra-Gilbert-S...

...I of course expect that any popular book will have 1 star reviews, especially by people who had a hard time with the material. Anyone have thoughts whether the Strang book is better as a supplement to other texts in coming up to speed on Linear Algebra? Other book recommendations?

xrangeon Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud

Just some clarification for those readers not in the U.S.. You as the defendant do not have to select have your case tried by a jury. You can select to have a bench trial instead. There is a presumption of innocence for the defendant, so the prosecutor has to show "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the defendant committed the crime in question. Juries find defendants not guilty more often then judges do. So if you want a society that better reflects the maxim, "better 10 guilty men go free, than 1 innocent man go to prison", then juries are empirically better.

http://aja.ncsc.dni.us/courtrv/cr43-2/CR43-2Bornstein.pdf

xrangeon Foxconn to Build $10B Factory in U.S

Is there a way to find out how much Foxconn pays in U.S. taxes right now? Or how much revenue they earn in the U.S.? If Apple has Foxconn make phones in Taiwan, and Apple then ships phones to the U.S., then Foxconn doesn't pay any taxes to the U.S. on those transactions, right? Only Apple would right? If Foxconn doesn't pay any tax to the U.S. right now (???), and they build a factory in the U.S. and don't pay any taxes in the future, then it is a wash (except for now the U.S. employees would be paying income tax, etc.). Or am I missing a piece of the puzzle? (As in, maybe Foxconn is currently paying a lot in U.S. taxes from whatever operations they have in the U.S. currently?)

xrangeon Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new algorithm

Might as well put a Wikipedia link here about the fission product isotopes and their half lives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission_product#Radioa...

xrangeon Priceline now worth $100B

>If you were to tell a non-HNer that Kayak, Booking, Priceline, CheapFlights, OpenTable, and other large websites are worth 100B combined, I don't think they would even blink an eye.

...is that because you don't think non-HNer's don't have an appreciation for how much something like Walmart is worth (~$250B)? Or because you think they believe that $100B is a reasonable valuation?

>Really is fascinating how different perspectives can be.

My personal experience is that "most people" wouldn't recognize that Kayak, Booking, CheapFlights, and OpenTable were businesses / websites, let alone use them.

xrangeon Defining the Undefinedness of C (2015) [pdf]

>Here's something I'd love to know about undefined behavior in C: is this something specific to C, or is it something that any similar language would have to contend with?

How similar is similar? Pascal? Ada? Spark Ada? Rust? Friendly C (https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1180)?

xrangeon Social Media Is the New Smoking

>what if I'm on duolingo learning Spanish? What if I'm checking my investments or making a trade?

...ah, the Paul Erdos defense:

http://amphetamines.com/paul-erdos.html

> I spend too much time on my phone, but a lot of it is useful and productive.

Looks like we might need to an another item to the list:

http://www.magicmgmt.com/magic/abuse-excuse/

xrangeon Social Media Is the New Smoking

>...I wish I had found a way to stay clean.

Anyone have success stories to share? I've tried adding various sites to my hosts file. But I seem to lapse after a while, since I can restore the file anytime I want to. Any negative reinforcement ideas? Like an annoying sound (baby shrieking?) played or an electrical shock when browsing to particular sites? Any methods to prevent yourself from uninstalling things like that though?

Any ideas on how long it might take to get over any "withdrawl" period? Like you only need to "tough it out" for a month, and then it becomes more manageable?

xrangeon Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break

http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/madrid.html

xrangeon Pentagon study declares American Empire is 'collapsing'

>1. First America stops being world police.

Yes, how do we do this? I'd like to see us declare victory, and remove our troops from South Korea, Japan, Germany, the rest of Europe, the Middle East, and everywhere else. The UK did essentially this over the course of the 20th century. Is there any way to accelerate the process without world wars?

Does anyone have examples of groups working "together" that share one common interest, and are opposed on many other fronts?

xrangeon My Father’s Weakness for Beer Never Lessened His Strengths

Anyone have stats on rates of alcohol use over time, compared to other medications? For example, maybe people are using anti-depressants instead of medicating themselves with alcohol?

xrangeon Ancient Iraqi Artifacts Imported By Hobby Lobby to be Forfeited

Today You Learned:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=islamic+state+b...

xrangeon Ask HN: Assistive Devices for recently quadriplegic dad

Dasher might be something worth looking into:

http://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/

xrangeon New features you can't use unless you are in Python 3

>There are very few projects without Py3 support, and most you'll find without Py3 support is because the project has been dead for quite some time.

One notable exception is FreeCAD for anyone who is looking to jump into a project to help with the transition from python 2 to 3.

xrangeon FreeCAD Arch development news

>...it's so full of little bugs and crashes it's not really usable in my mind. I'm using the version from Debian unstable.

Ever try it on another platform or build? I've been learning FreeCAD for the past few months, and while have certainly come across "quirks" (like certain boolean operations not working quite right, the polar array feature in the Draft workbench working with everything I throw at it, but the polar array feature on the Part Design workbench choking on somethings, etc.). I've never had it crash. I've been using the "stock" v0.16 x64 build on Windows 10. It could be that since I'm just a CAD newbie, that I'm not exercising it hard.

xrangeon India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green

That sounds like it is true for western countries, but China has a lot of nuclear power coming online, and what are the attitudes in India?

xrangeon India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green

Anyone know more about India's nuclear story? At one time they were focusing on thorium. I wonder what we could do to spur on a little more competition with China.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and...

xrangeon Oh My Gosh, It’s Covered in Rule 30s

Mistakes have been known to happen, like carving the wrong value for pi into a wall:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Park_MAX_Station#El...

xrangeon Oh My Gosh, It’s Covered in Rule 30s

>Does he ever mention Conway in any of his texts?

For "A New Kind of Science", here is the index entry:

    Conway, John H. (England/USA, 1937- )
      and arithmetic recurrences, 1115
      and Game of Life, 877, 880, 949
      and iterated run-length encoding, 905
      and non-periodic tilings, 943
      in Preface, xiii
      and recursive sequences, 907
      and universality of Life, 1117

https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/index/names/a-e.php?Searc...