skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Both Google and FB (from what I understand) have a ton of tricks to help this, but I expect Yann was speaking generally even with all these tricks, and he is right from what I have seen. The old paper on DistBelief talks about topping out at ~80 machines due to network overhead - it would be great if they talk more about distributed TF in an upcoming paper.

If TF really has a way to make general, networked, distributed training efficient (more than 1 bit weight updates, low precision weights and all the other crazy tricks which already exist) - that is truly remarkable and they rightly deserve huge kudos.

If they are faster in distributed training only on Google machines or with Google's network architecture, that isn't really a useful datapoint for the general public.

We could wire everything with 10GB/s NiCs, change to jumbo frames, pull all these other bandwidth reducing tricks, trick out the Linux kernel, etc. and then your network probably won't matter - but that isn't really general or cheap. The key will be what is the minimum effort necessary to avoid network bottlenecking, and does TF improve that minimum level over existing solutions?
Sounds really cool. Where do you live?
x86 is hampered by backwards-compatibility. Could anyone comment on some of the more technical CPU architecture reasons for this?

The reasons are mostly (1) x86 has strong memory ordering which is slower than weak ordering and (2) x86 needs a "complex" decoder to parse all the prefixes and crack instructions into uops (but ARMv8 cores require two decoders and may crack shifts) and (3) x86 is so hairy that it requires a massive test suite and dozens of errata still slip through, but the overhead of these is really small compared to Intel's advantages in money, manpower, and accumulated expertise.

Do A64 CPUs have potential to outpace x86_64 processors in power consumption and performance simply because of the architecture?

IMO no. It's cheaper to reach parity (Apple's processor R&D is much lower than Intel's), but I don't see why they'd outpace.
Hm, I'd love to hear more about the illegal thing you cited. My startup lets everyone choose, all we require is an EIN and there's no paperwork, and it's all been approved by my legal.

I've been through some various business types in the space, the worst was a registered Commercial Fundraiser where yes I had to setup bonds and the fees were ridiculous with individual filing between charity and state. But for you (and me actually) it doesn't seem as big of a deal until it hits scale. If you're referring to registrations for "Charitable Solicitation", we've been through that too. I quickly asked my legal and he responded with: as long as you're not specifically targeting persons in any state nor do you supply names and contact info for donors to the charities so they can't send thank you notes it's not an issue. YMMV and don't hold me to that, but it may not be a big issue for you and open up a new avenue.
Nvidia launches Jetson TX1 module to power artificial intelligence
The wireless carriers are the other industry that have retail branches of a size seemingly out of all proportion to what they need to transact business. The contrast to many locations overseas, especially in Asia, where cellphones are often sold over a small counter in an electronics store is striking. I assume it's some combination of the big branches acting as advertising and being part of what's effectively a sort of arms race between carriers.
Free International Calls App Flyp to Rival Skype, WhatsApp; Launches Globally
To me the whole joke is just how much you can explain using such a ludicrously limited vocabulary. Clarity is a side effect.
It's easy to miss this, but the big point is doing a rolling update when running at serious scale:

> What is exciting is that while successfully handling 1 million HTTP requests per second with uninterrupted availability, we have Kubernetes perform a zero-downtime rolling upgrade of the service to a new version of the software while we're still serving 1 million requests per second.
This reads more like a bad review of the new Macbook than a great review of the new iPad Pro. Of course, this was already the case before, the new Macbook has always been kind of a head-scratcher:

1. Despite the amazing battery advancements it gets worse batter life than the Macbook Air (9 hrs web vs 12 hrs).

2. A worse graphics card than the Macbook Air yet MORE pixels.

3. A higher price point.

Any time I bring this up, I'm told I don't get it and this isn't a computer for a "pro" like me. But that doesn't really mesh with the fact that its a super expensive computer. Who is this for?

I guess it makes for a really great comparison to the new iPad Pro.
If CoreData syncing is discouraged, what is offered as its replacement?
This is a bid to place Microsoft above reproach. They get to play the "we did everything in our power to protect privacy" card, while still remaining fully compliant with government back-door policies. Now the media runs with this, and eventually the mindless masses are lulled back to sleep while their rights and freedoms continue to be eroded.
Apple already had Apple Pay. What's better about the new one?
> but find it perfectly believable that a segment of modern day Austrians is still in convenient denial.

Sure, but I did not dispute that. There are people with questionable ideologies in all countries. However if you look at the population as a whole the question is how large that percentage is (among people who were not actively involved in the war).

The reason why I object to the concept that Austria is particularly problematic in that regard (which is what international opinion appears to be) is because we can have a direct comparison to Germany. You can basically divide a German statistic by 10 and then compare it to Austria to see how the countries are doing. And with regards to most things with regards to national socialism we are doing significantly better than Germany these days.
> My whole point was to say how the industry works and that professional game developers, important word here professional not indie, don't care one little second about the point of view you are expressing.

You made several mistakes in that statement.

1. You claimed that only publisher funded developers are professionals, while those who are self funded or backed by other means (like investors or crowdfunding), i.e. independent (=indie) developers are not professionals. That's an insult to many truly professional people. There is no dependency on publisher funding to be a professional.

2. You assumed that publisher funded production doesn't care about this issue. Do you think they don't have to balance their budgets? Just because they are publisher funded doesn't mean they have infinite resources and doesn't mean that those publishers are happy about extra costs.

I.e. everyone cares about it and nobody normal likes it. The only ones who like lock-in are those crooked vendors who push it on everyone else. Also, if someone doesn't care about the industry progressing - they can't be called professionals.
My whole family and many of my friends use iPhones.

iPhones are extremely secure thanks to TouchID and Apple's software.

Apple already has payment info for me and a good relationship with banks.

They're normally pretty great at UI and can integrate it into the OS in ways no 3rd party ever could.

It will be built into the phone and come preinstalled so I don't have to convince people to install it.

Apple shows a lot more respect for my privacy than other companies that I could see doing this (such as Facebook/Google) and isn't a company I already despise (PayPal, YMMV when it comes to despising Apple).

Let's look at this a different way: no one has cracked this potential market yet (at least in the US, just nibbling at the edges)... what makes you think Apple can't make a good play?
Well the odd thing is, in prison where you are not permitted a cell phone if you "had" one the authorities are not permitted to jam it.
"The entire x86 computer architecture is living on borrowed time. It’s a dead platform walking. The future belongs to ARM, and Apple’s A-series SoC’s are leading the way."

I can't believe that lines like this are still being written. I devoted the better part of a career to successfully debunking this idea that ARM has some sort of magical power efficiency advantages over x86. I can, however, console myself that such claims are exceedingly rare. Most people who lived through the "RISC vs. CISC" platform wars and made such claims conceded defeat a long time ago.

Anyway, I addressed this issue in one of my last CPU articles for Ars back in 2011:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/02/nvidia-30-and-the-ri...

Quote:

"It's also the case that as ARM moves up the performance ladder, it will necessarily start to drop in terms of power efficiency. Again, there is no magic pixie dust here, and the impact of the ISA alone on power consumption in processors that draw many tens of watts is negligible. A multicore ARM chip and a multicore Xeon chip that give similar performance on compute-intensive workloads will have similar power profiles; to believe otherwise is to believe in magical little ARM performance elves."

Also, I think that benchmarks run in this article for the purpose of comparing the iPad to the MacBook are pretty worthless. I don't have a good answer for how to comparatively benchmark them, or even if that makes sense. Meaningful cross-platform benchmarking is really hard, just ask the SPEC people.

Finally, in the article linked above, I predicted that the only way ARM is a threat to x86 is because it's cheaper, and that if ARM can get within something like 2X the performance of Intel's higher end CPUs, it might have a shot by virtue of being widely and inexpensively licensed.

Anyway, the TL;DR here is that those benchmarks say more about the software stack (the benchmark software included) than the do about the CPU and GPU hardware, and the reports of x86's death at the hands of PowerPC^H^H^H ARM are, as always, greatly exaggerated.
It would not surprise me to see an Apple ARM chip in future Macs. The improvement to battery life would be huge. As with the Intel transition, I bet Apple already has OS X running on ARM chips.

The biggest problem would be to get third-party software developers to port to ARM, especially the major ones like Adobe. Microsoft already does a lot of work for ARM, so the barrier to getting Office running on OS X on ARM might be pretty low.
We need a law mandating security updates which are decoupled from new features. Alternately, an OS vendor who makes this a point of competitive differentiation.

Unfortunately, MS is forcing new features alongside security fixes, and Android devices have a poor track record of timely security updates. So we are left with Apple, whose iOS9 effectively destroyed the performant usability of older devices.
> Where would one have to hide to retain this level of ignorance for so long?

This comment breaks the HN guidelines by being both uncivil and unsubstantive (i.e. it adds no information). Please only post comments that are both civil and unsubstantive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Try David Graeber's Debt, The First 5,000 Years

:)
Pull a MSDS on glycerine, you will not be happy to discover there are all manner of problems, enough mist will kill you quite effectively, externally it kills rabbits at a level corresponding to swimming in it acutely, long term skin exposure is very unclear. Various governments have differing views on how much is safe to breathe in a workplace along the lines of ten or so milligrams per cubic meter which isn't much. I can't get a straight answer on oral toxicity; drinking somewhere around half a percent body weight kills half the mice, so if I did the math right in my head, if you are a man sized mouse, drinking the equivalent of a wine bottle of pure glycerin in one sitting might lead to very serious medical problems (like death, for example). The long term effects listed sound scary for kidneys and "reproductive organs".

In the short term it appears fairly hard to get killed by glycerin. Long term it doesn't sound very good at all. In that way, it reminds me of benzene or PCBs where in the short term theres zero risk if you can avoid drowning, but the long term effects are pretty awful.

Its definitely not as safe as water. Of course the "real" problem is likely whatever else is in the fluid. Who knows whats in there.
Microsoft’s AI Can Now Guess Your Emotion
In my state its illegal to smoke vapes anywhere its illegal to smoke cigarettes. This largely keeps it out of public spaces. I don't know how this applies to other states.

Also there is debate in the community about respect. I have more friends that step out for a vape, just like they would for cig, so they don't bother non smokers, than puff away like its nothing. But that's purely anecdotal.
Apple Pay is consumer -> business, so you can buy groceries at Whole Foods.

This is consumer -> consumer. Letting me send my friend $5 to split the tab on the pizza he's ordering or a quick $20 birthday gift to a niece.
I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt, so long as my position is a significantly smaller version of the founding team's. If there's a difference, I'm going to assume that my share is worth $0 until I can get cash-in-hand.
InstaAgent app pulled after 'harvesting passwords'
That's a form of personal attack that isn't allowed here, so please don't address other users this way.
> E-Cigarettes are on the road to being banned indoors

1) That's pretty much unenforceable. If you take a hit and hold it in for 10 seconds, then no vapor is exhaled. I use mine in movie theaters, and no one is the wiser.

> The lungs do not 100% process all of the chemicals being inhaled

2) See #1.
Facebook Is Blocking an Upstart Rival—But It’s Complicated
E-cigs do not dose bystanders with nicotine.
The question is why it hasn't happened sooner. This thing in your pocket is not just your telephone, but also your watch, map, calendar, contact book, music player, library, and so on. It can't be long before it's also your passport and your wallet.

These are things that had a life as separate items in days of yore and separate websites not long ago. They're also things that naturally lend themselves to the format of a phone.

You'd have thought the mobile wallet would have been the first thing on the minds of the big platform companies.
> "But that doesn't really mesh with the fact that its a super expensive computer. Who is this for?"

Early adopters and people who need absolute maximum portability and are not particularly price-sensitive.

The MacBook is smaller, thinner, and lighter than the MBA, and has a higher quality screen. If you need a laptop that fits the above description and don't mind the cost, it's a good bet.

More to the point though - it occupies a similar space as the MacBook Air when it originally came out (recall that the MBA was ~$1500-2000 when it first came out). I think it's fairly obvious that Apple's letting early adopters pay the premium, and once they can get production costs down enough it will simply take over as the lowest-tier Mac laptop entirely, probably at the same $900-1000 price point the MBA is at today.

It is the exact same trajectory as the original MacBook Air - introduced as premium ultra-portable product, eventually replacing the plastic MacBooks as the base-level product.
If most people around you are exhaling clouds of "vapor" at regular intervals, you may need to re-evaluate your surroundings.
Blackberry Priv: Privacy, Security, or Privilege?
>The rule should be that you pay tax in the country that you earned the money, based on the tax laws of that country.

So now instead of following one tax code and dealing with one tax authority you have to deal with 28. The whole point of EU is to cut down on stuff like that and reduce the cost of doing business between members.
This will be apple pay via ACH basically. It will allow merchants to avoid the 1% charge on debit cards etc..
My suspicion is that it has to do something with Metal being used instead of OpenGL for system apps in iOS 9 [1]. The result is severe framedrops when scrolling lists in apps and rendering overlays as on video.

[1] http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/

The behaviour seen on linked videos have been the same since first Beta 1 in June 2015, but wasn't taken seriously in online discussions as "being a beta" and was thought it will be taken care of in the future.
Amazon selling Android tablets with pre-installed Chinese Trojan
The website is built off the publicly available, raw OFLC disclosure data for LCA applications. I'm sure you're just not remembering correctly about WalMart.

>Do you really think that $46,000 is a reasonable salary to pay a DATA SCIENTIST??? Please, by all means, explain this to me.

Chill dude. For a lower level data scientist in Westminster, CO, that's appropriate. Notice they have a higher level data scientist getting $76k. Not accusing of cherry picking, but really, this is the second time you've done it.
Those same circles usually advocate for well regulated capitalism. Monopolies need to be punished and externalities taxed.
I can't tell if you're joking. If joke: well played.
iMessage doesn't require you to figure out if the other user has an iPhone. Do an OS update and all of a sudden messages just start turning blue for some people (along with other UX bonuses that are superior to the vanilla SMS experience)

I would imagine that a consumer-to-consumer Apple Pay would work similarly. Hell, it might be integrated directly in the messages app.
Your comments on the marginal careerist's increasing struggles are exactly what I was getting at, and I appreciate that you crystallized the finer points. I agree with your comments on the rat race as well.

The trouble is getting people to talk about this stuff. Sure, if you follow the media, there's drips and bits of chatter about how incomes are stagnant and cost of living is rising, but there's not really enough data on decisions that people made as a result of decreasing opportunity. How many people are forgoing college in favor of skills training? How many people are turning down offers to join new art galleries or other conventionally not-super-profitable ventures? I think the danger here is that 20 years from now we have a cultural lost era because we didn't have enough money to fund people to just sit around and be creative. It doesn't sound so bad, but it'd be quite empty.
If anyone is cheating in "burst performance", that would be Intel with its "Turbo Boost" feature. Unfortunately, most benchmark only reveal the performance of Intel's chips with Turbo Boost, not without.
It really is a loss that Apple enthusiasts are so trapped in their bubble. Apple makes some fantastic gear, but there's a whole world exploring design choices. I recognize some of the compromises the author talks about trying to use a tablet as a computer from time spent with those devices, like the Samsung Q1 and numerous exotic devices that were more like prototypes than anything.

It's not clear Apple will care to consider developers on the iPad platform, or professional users of any requirement, since Apple seems to like to sell users a device for every purpose.

I just spent time with an Asus Chromebook Flip, which has an excellent keyboard and trackpad and converts into a tablet or the useful tent mode, has a quality aluminium body and IPS display, and weighs less than 2lbs. Give that $300 device a faster CPU, backlit keys, replace the bezel with a full size 4:3 12" screen and it's pretty much the perfect no-compromises browser-centric device that'd still be less than half the price of the iPad Pro with keyboard. And ChromeOS acknowledges enough of its Linux base that the user will get respect when they want to go below the covers.
Firmament: Good cluster scheduling
Using FM to Improve Wireless Networks
Yale Protester Needs 'Safe Space' Because of Politically Correct Parenting
He's not a journalist, he's a pundit.
Experience-wise, I have used both Venmo and QuickPay (and Apple Pay). I would much much rather use a P2P version of Apple Pay than either of the other two. Agreed that it would be yet-another service I'd have to use, but I already have to switch between Venmo and Chase Quickpay and others.

In addition, there are well-known cases of Venmo being insecure by design, because it relies on interbank transfers. The response from Venmo is that you should not use Venmo with people you don't trust, because the money can be clawed back. So, for example, for receiving payment for an item you sold on Craigslist. I highly doubt Apple would put its name/the TouchID brand on a service with similar pitfalls.
They do, plus other chemicals either in the liquid vapor, or created by the heat in the vape.[1][2][3]

[1] http://www.medicaldaily.com/secondhand-smoke-goes-electronic...

[2] http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/281762.php

[3] http://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/news/20140903/e-cigar...
And that's how you learned about the birds and the bees?

Sorry, I'll show myself out...
I hope that Docker will increase the popularity of languages like Haskell by taking away most of the problems with deployment and dependency management. If I can just create a Docker container for my ops team to deploy, without them needing to know what is inside of it, I can pretty much use any language I want.
This will be fixed when it's needed. To deviate from the discussion, I don't know why Bitcoin doesn't move to a faster block time. Less time to confirm a transaction, more blocks per minute, more transactions per second.
Money is actually a very powerful technology. I hope people will start to think of this as a high-tech problem. We can improve the concept of money. Seems like a lot of people think the answer is just to give it up. But that is simplistic and discounting the power of a universal trading system.

I think the answer is to really understand how money functions in our society and the parts that work and the parts that don't and come up with an evolution of the concept that incorporates technology into society and works better.

For example: bitcoin, Ethereum, some kind of holistic schema for tracking resources which would make us less dependent upon money and make it easier to plan. Maybe have a few categories of money for different things.

If we can insert better technology (than basic money) to mediate society, maybe we can create an opt-in society that is more fair, efficient, and still evolves freely.

But don't just say "money sucks" and throw it out, and unthinkingly resort to technocommunism.

Its kind of like when people will give up their Christian faith and then decide they should become hedonists. We need to think through things more and really synthesize ideas. Integrating technology into society can make things like universal point systems (money) more practical and more fair.
What about display? I guess, Macbook Air has terrible TN matrix with bad view angles and iPad Pro has good IPS matrix. That's an important difference for many users.
Astronomers announce discovery of closest Earth-sized planet yet found