skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Limiting free speech

This accusation is very vague and it could mean anything. It's surely more limited than, say, in Sweden. It way less limited than in Saudi Arabia.

> banning political opposition

Russian parliament consists of 4 parties, 3 of those are oppositional. I'm sure there is a number of banned NGOs, but totalitarian countries usually don't have this kind of political plurality.

> arresting dissidents

Notice they don't arrest people for being a political dissident? Khodorkovsky was brought up on tax evasion charges (which he undoubtedly committed). Pussy Riot was charged with hooliganism (which they undoubtedly committed). Were the trials politically motivated? Sure! Is it unique to totalitarian states that people who oppose the establishment come under higher scrutiny? Please...

> persecuting people for their sexuality

Now we are venturing into the cool-aid area. Modern Russia never prosecuted anyone for their sexuality. Homosexuality means attraction to the same sex and people are free to act on their attraction in Russia. There are a number of openly gay public figures. Russia has laws protecting LGBT minorities from discrimination. I would venture further - Russian government's policy right now is as progressive on LGBT rights as possible in Russia. The populace is hugely homophobic, ranging from 'being gay is a disease' to 'gay must be stoned'. It's the same in most of the former Soviet republics - even in the Lithuania over 80% of people consider homosexuality a perversion [1].

And by misrepresenting the fact about the state of the LGBT community in Russia the Western media only make Putin's life easier, since he can present it as a 'them-versus-us' issue internally. Compare [2]

> invading neighbour sovereign states

Is the emphasis here on 'neighbour'? Because if invading other countries is a sign of totalitarianism than the list of totalitarian countries will have some very surprising names on it.

> I don't know about you, but I think "totalitarian" draw a more correct picture

Which is your good right. I just don't see enough facts to support your opinion that Russia is a ' state [which] holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible.' [3]

[1] http://www.delfi.lt/news/daily/lithuania/apklausa-daugiau-ne... (use google translate)

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/05/russia-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism
How to Manage Employees Who Are Future Founders
It would actually contradict it if this article mentioned melanoma like the post you found. I highly suspect we'll find individual ways of treating most individual cancer types before finding one that targets them all.
I'm pretty sure "strictly defined cultural phenomenon" is an oxymoron.
Source? In the UK I'm pretty confident the definition of marriage isn't exclusive domain to heterosexual couples.
I would have to say your talking about design not story. They designed him to look like a plumber because he was more western friendly. Had nothing to do with the story.
Missile launch over San Francisco
I found myself in a similar position recently. I've gone back and read books usually assigned in high school and really enjoyed returning to them after all these years. Anything Vonnegut, East of Eden, and The Things They Carried, to name a few.
Nobody forced us to open-source Lasagne, so I think that remark was a bit unfair. If we really didn't care about anything but graduating, why would we bother going through the trouble of sharing the code in the first place?

But I do see your point. Google obviously has a lot more manpower to spend on this, so it might be a better bet in the long run.

It's also worth comparing this to a few similar projects that have been announced recently: MXNet (http://mxnet.readthedocs.org/en/latest/), Chainer (http://chainer.org/) and CGT (http://rll.berkeley.edu/cgt/). And Theano of course, which has been the flag-bearer of the computational graph approach in deep learning for many years.
This article has some interesting figures on pollution from gasoline vs electric cars: "There Are Places Where Electric Cars Pollute More Than Gas Guzzlers" http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/07/where-electri...
They are from executive branch. TPP is clearly a legislative effort (of monstrous proportions), so it should be controlled by the legislative branch, including ability to amend and discuss the agreement in advance in transparent and public fashion.

It is clearly undemocratic, because executive branch here usurps the power to create law.
> Explaining a gap in your resume is a reasonable thing for people to do when applying for a job.

But why should people have to do that?
Developer tips: How to write a better app pitch
General discussion typically does not try to list references for things that are obvious. But of course it can be done.

Limiting free speech:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_Russia
"the Russian government exerts control over civil society through selective implementation of the law, restriction and censure."
"In 2013 Russia ranked 148th out of 179 countries in the Press Freedom Index from Reporters Without Borders."

Banning political opposition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Party_(Russia)
"On 28 April 2015 the party was deprived of registration."

Arresting dissidents:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny

Persecuting people for their sexuality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_LGBT_propaganda_law

Invading neighbour sovereign states:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014%E2%80%9315_Russian_milita...

An we could add to the list. But it would be pointless, wouldn't it? Since we know that the first step is "you don't have any references", and the next step is "here's some mud flying at you and your references".
The simple reason is that people make money by trading stocks. And they make enough to keep doing it instead of doing something else.

It's simple economics. If they wouldn't be able to make money they probably wouldn't trade.
No text is the least biased. "Control Group" looks like a joke hat.
I know plenty that think the US is the center of the world. This very discussion is about why you might not have noticed that part of American culture.

Why do you think that our democratically elected leaders feel so comfortable bombing, invading and murdering? They know much of the population ultimately feels that it is the US society's prerogative.
TPP? Moloch.

This was amazing to read.
I'm no rocket scientist but I could imagine rockets having a place in regular space travel. Lets assume that we can harness solar power efficiently and safely store the extra energy in hydrogen and oxygen gas. Then let's say that we could construct sturdy and modular components that can be disassembled and re-assembled at some kind of orbital station, so that the boosters that take people into orbit for whatever reason could be rebuilt in orbit to carry a load of asteroid-mined metals back to the surface.

Again, I don't know any of the mechanics or physics, but if energy was abundant and parts could be reused, would rockets really be all that bad?
Tech Lead – Analytics
Colonialism typically siphons profits generated by capital from the colony to the colonial masters. This is an economic fact. It's not extortion but it does leech capital from the colony and is systematic.
> Also isn't Syria one of the bad guys right now, so waging war against them is a-ok?

Not in Russia it seems.
> Doing that is, from what I've read at least, 100% useless.

Well it's not 100% useless, it's just not "100% success rate guaranteed every time". Maybe not even 20%. But 100% useless will be hard to prove..
See Enigma [1] and homomorphic encryption for a related concept:

The key new utility Enigma brings to the table is the ability to run computations on data, without
having access to the raw data itself. For example, a group of people can provide access to their
salary, and together compute the average wage of the group. Each participant learns their relative
position in the group, but learns nothing about other members’ salaries. It should be made clear
that this is only a motivating example. In practice, any program can be securely evaluated while
maintaining the inputs a secret.

[1] http://enigma.media.mit.edu/enigma_full.pdf
Might one conclude that this influential opinion might have created a big old stinky career mess for someone in the field that took many months to clean up and cost one a fair chunk of change to do so? So perhaps one could be forgiven for noting such a disruptive change in viewpoint?

Now we all must own our choices and one was very silly, stupid, and naive to blindly accept a position at Google, but everyone makes mistakes, no?

Further, TensorFlow looks fantastic but given that even just a year ago, when one was recruited to return to Google for !(Deep Learning) but for something which also happened to be another braindead obvious choice to run on GPUs, one was informed said viewpoint on GPUs was still in effect and declined.

So what I'd really love to know is how the message finally sunk in? I'm betting there's a really great story here.
Why? I hate reactjs and the jsx format... ember is so much more powerful. i know, it's probably not apples to apples. but why patch together 10 different techs to get a web app up and running when ember and ember cli, does it all for you.

PS: I am open to convert over, so convince me :)
The World of Modular Synthesizers (2013)
> that failed to even make the same connection to "bear poking"

Office worker X wears an attractive dress to work one day. It's within her right to do so and is not breaking any rules. Officer worker Y comes over, drops his trousers and says "Want to poke my bear?".

Journalist X makes a statement about Russia. It's within her right to do so and not breaking any rules. Russian Shill Y comes over and says "Fuck you, here's a torrent of abuse for many months".

In both cases the bear got provoked by something the subject did, by making a statement with her clothes or her words. But you're saying in both cases it's her fault that the bear got provoked and she shouldn't do it?
That makes much more sense, thanks for digging in.

I'd think that the applicants with 'cancer survivor' emblazoned on their hat could come across as making an appeal for sympathy and that is out of place in that setting illustrating poor judgement beyond wearing a hat indoors. Their discussion on the perception that cancer survivors are 'warm' but less 'competent' makes me think they undermined their study since they made a confounding incompetent-but-warm action. A better control might have had an animal charity hat and spent time volunteering.
The Wikipedia text states

A person is fastened to the swing base by their feet.

so unless there is a major equipment failure or your stomach decides to rebel all should be fine.
Money is irrelevant.

They are symbolic of the obscene luxury, wealth, power and elitism that comes from the absurd and archaic concepts of hereditary privilege and 'divine right'.

Sod the money, we'll make do without it. Just get rid of them.

The fact we still have a queen tells us we’re no more sophisticated than bees.
Even if at some point humans no longer had any edge, by pure randomness some of them would still have really good performance. So even in a perfectly efficient market you wouldn't expect humans to be taken over.
Float may be evil, but if so they are often a necessary evil.
Interesting that this has happened so soon after relocating to the UK (2014) from Australia. I wonder if they plan to stay there or move the US as well?
You can call computer a calculator since it does indeed 'calculate' stuff, but you'll be in a minority. Computer's got so much more than a simple calculator, same with marriages - it is much more for a man and woman in every country in the world.
10 Reasons Python Is Awesome
An algorithm parsing the aggregate reaction of mostly non-experts, mostly to news delivered over relatively slow mainstream media channels, is going to be much slower than a human hearing the investor briefing and hitting the "sell at any price" button.
Are We on the Verge of Humans 2.0?
> This isn't even fake science, this is just a piece designed to generate outrage.

It's quite a cognitive leap from "I think there's a methodology flaw" to "this is just a piece designed to generate outrage".

Note that this flaw is discussed in the 'limitations' section of the paper.
Two interesting exceptions to the win-or-fail linear narrative:

Kentucky Route Zero — Player choice affects the flavor of narrative but not the direction of the story, so that the story is linear but the experience is wildly different for everyone who plays it. Absolutely brilliant. Player choices that both do not matter and, at the same time, matter more than anything else.

Black Ops 2: I know, I know, and yeah the first one is probably in the top 5 worst games I've ever played, and this one's got a ton of issues, but what it gets right are a huge number of opportunities to fail forward—losses, big and small, that affect the story rather than showing a game over screen. More dumb action games should do this, it would make them suck less. It's also got the best local multiplayer I've seen in an FPS since Perfect Dark (though still not as good) but that's another topic.
My logic is based on numbers. Earth Population, Imaginary lines in the sand, War over money. These are not signs of intelligence, especially when they have only 1 planet to survive on that gets more populated every day with little regard to long-term resource management, although I am proud of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. :)

This type of planning worked for Voyager (NASA/JPL).

fyi: cars suck. Dirty, inefficient, and it follows the same logic of giving every person in a 200 person hotel an individual elevator. It makes no sense, when you can instead design cities and transportation to be like the site I linked above (www.et3.com).

It's their choice though, if they want faster horses instead of cars, so be it.
If they want faster cars instead of et3, so be it.

They prop and fall on their own sword I suppose.
Google Open-Sources Its Machine Learning
October's Tech Unemployment: 2.8 Percent
Don't let your websites design get in the way of business growth
Leaders are replaced all the time in the U.S. In fact, we have a system of government specifically designed to faciliate the regular replacement of leaders.
Really has nothing to do with Airbnb. It is simply a tragic accident that could have happened on any tree/any swing.
Cultural means that everywhere where there is a similar culture the things will mean the same to people.
I love reading just about everything and I'm having the hardest time getting momentum on Infinite Jest. I think partly due to the fact that I personally only have some vague idea of what I'm getting myself into.
I drove to the address 3204 Canyon Lake Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90068 mentioned in the article about 2 months ago. That's a really good spot I can recommend.
Atlassian had financing rounds which provided employees with liquidity, http://fortune.com/2014/04/10/atlassian-the-3-3-billion-soft...

"The $150 million it recently raised isn’t going into its bank account — instead, its new investors are buying shares from past and present employees in an effort to offer workers some liquidity and retain talent ... 'the Accel Partners round was mostly about founders, and this [T. Rowe Price] one is about employees. Now neither of the founders are selling anything. So this is a little different. We’ve been profitable for 10 years, so we don’t need the cash, we have a lot of cash in the bank. It’s more a case of wanting to get a partner [that knows about public markets] on board..'"
I agree. And the OP is also underestimating the effectiveness of insider trading.
H2O.ai Raises $20M for Its Open Source Machine Learning Platform
One small note on the paper itself. I love that the paper's author are in alphabetical orders, without any stupid jostling over first/last authorship.

I think that's fantastic and wish academia went that way too (yeah right).
> Without Glasnost the Soviet Union would probably still be around.

Not at all. The cause of USSR's demise was its failing economy. There was literally not enough food, due to very poor agricultural practices and very inefficient industry. Per Yegor Gaidar (who later became Russia's Prime Minister) there was barely enough food to feed the population of Moscow during the winter of 1985-85. This is what made the Soviet leadership of the time suggest some changes, before hunger really struck the country.

Actually, there were a few more or less efficient industries in the USSR: it produced quite nice automatic weapons, military aircraft and pretty reliable spacecraft. These things required efficiency (at least, in a form of a well-working end result) due to high visibility and apparent military importance. The regime could not afford to be weak on the military side, or look like a failure in space. It could ration butter, milk, sausage, etc to the population because it was not such a big deal, apparently.
solving mental problems is a great way.
but... no guarantee it can cope with the problem stated.

long years of practice really helped me with mental/physical health and solving major psychical problems, but can do nothing with my job.
even it was period we have no load, but still full salary, it was total demotivation to do something at office (even for my own). btw office was fine, big and with little people, alowing almost live in it.

since our department was disbanded, I still do not want again going at work, it seems very horrible.

so the outcome - you may have to change something in your life. no idea what. try.
Whenever I've done this in the past it was because of a desire to do a good job.

Whenever I find myself working for someone where the majority of what I do is because I fear retribution I've also found that I've generally grown unhappy with the situation and should move on.

Work isn't 100% fun, and it probably shouldn't be. There are going to be tedious things that you HAVE to do because it is your job. However, if you're doing everything because you HAVE to, not because you want to do a good job, there is a problem somewhere and you should examine it.
It's impossible to create an algorithm that encompasses all the factors that contribute to a company's stock price (or, perhaps more accurately, all the factors that a given investor believes will affect the stock price). There's also an implementation gap between the model a stock analyst can create in Excel and its implementation as an algorithm. The former is within the reach of far more people than the latter.

Finally, don't forget that somebody has to design and write the algorithms.
Show HN: Wundermilk
I don't really see the benefits of space elevators, to be honest. At an altitude of 100km the gravity is still virtually the same. And you still need a huge amount of fuel in order to put your rocket/plane into orbit. Unless you build an elevator with a height of 42'164km (geostationary orbit) - but that seems unrealistic to me.
Astronomical Times
The US Republic is a farce of democratic processes for sure, but they at least did that to themselves. They were given a choice.

If they fucked it up and created the plutocracy they did, fine. That was their mistake to make.

We still have an unelected upper house of parliament that actually has power, as well as our unelected, divinely appointed monarch.

We were never given the choice of fucking up our own republic. We should have been by now.
I almost didn't make this because the RTM client isn't bad, it's just that looking like iOS 6 didn't help my motivation (a personal taste). I was still surprised that moving your tasks from one system to another required so much effort.
"Give him all your stuff and starve. Or say no and get beheaded.."

I'm not sure about the starving part, would you have any references? If a city surrendered he did not sack it. If it did not - yeah, bad.
I flagged this because the article has little information and drops a lot of loaded terms like "sex switching". Very clearly baiting people into a gender/sex change debate.
A much simpler "hack" occurred to me recently. Suppose you wanted to store your car for a long time in a gated garage that also holds ZipCars.

Drive your car in and take a ticket as normal. When it's time to leave, book a ZipCar for one hour. Grab its parking pass and use it to exit the garage with your car. Park on the street nearby, walk the pass back to the ZipCar.

Are there typically countermeasures in place for this? Match the pass to the license plate with ANPR? Don't allow an exit without a corresponding entrance? Sucks for the next person to use the ZipCar. But how will they know it was you? Are video archives good enough to find the plate associated with a particular card swipe without a ton of manual effort?

(Assume you're trying to store a car for a month or more. At a fairly normal Chicago visitor parking rate of $25 for 2 hours, that would cost $9,000.)
Wow, the founders still hold a combined 75% of equity.
Watchmen (Alan Moore)

Origins of Form (Christopher Williams)

Starship & The Canoe (Kenneth Brower)

The Size of Lumber (Nicholson Baker)

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Shunryu Suzuki)

Deschooling Society (Ivan Illich)

Moby Dick (Herman Melville)

Bolo'Bolo (P.M.)

Le Ton beau de Marot (Douglas Hofstadter)

Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (James Lovelock)

Mouse or Rat: Translation as Negotiation (Umberto Eco)

Neuromancer (William Gibson)

The Intelligent Investor (Benjamin Graham)

Don Quixote (Miguel Cervantes)
> What is more worrying to me is when the police have more powers than the citizenry.

> Recognising the right of free citizens to enforce the law is a-okay in my book, although of course that's not quite what England's doing.

You make a good point. I'm generally in favor of the idea of "citizens arrest" and the like. But in this particular instance, the asymmetry is concerning.
I prefer a Resource-based Economy (rather than the failed money-strived attempts) that has a central hub for resource-distribution to all humans based on global reserves to raise the standard of living for all instead of a select few which every monetary system has ultimately created.

This would make an interesting topic to discuss how to design this system with our current tech, but that's another thread altogether.
Vitamin C has been proven to not have an effect on viral colds either way.[1] Vitamin D on the other hand has been proven to be an immune system modulator.[2] Unlike Vitamin C, most people develop Vitamin D deficiency.[3] I strongly advice you and everybody based on these studies to get yearly blood work and talk to a doctor about taking 4000IU daily supplement of Vitamin D. Also massive doses of Vitamin D can have negative effects.

As for Vitimin C, just because someone is a Noble Prize winner or brain surgeon doesn't mean they are an authority on all things. Ben Carson makes my point.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23440782

[2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870528/

[3]http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vitamin-d-deficien...
The Past and Future of Product Management
Is it a better way to use different terms for when people get together to have kids and continue the family and when they just 'want' each other?