skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm disappointed that you're disappointed. There's $1b coming from primarily not YC.
What do you mean by 'refuse a ride'?
I was in the exact position. H1B founder needed to move to a GC. My 6 year H1B renew runway was ending. Peter did all the legal/immigration work for me. Applied for the GC via extraordinary ability (EB1A) context. I must say this was the smoothest immigration experience ever. And I have gone through 2 x E3s & 3 x H1Bs using other lawyers. I wish I knew about Peter earlier. Highly recommend everyone here to work with Peter!!
These sound like good reasons for using it for compiler front ends. Is it equally helpful compiler back ends? I mean optimization and register allocation.
Disney drops–then doubles down on–DMCA claim over Star Wars figure pic
Quibble with the timeline: AI as a field has included a big chunk devoted to machine learning research pretty much continuously, especially since the '80s or so. The specific methods in vogue do change: decision trees, neural networks, SVMs, boosting, association-rule learning, genetic algorithms, Bayesian networks, etc. go through periods of waxing and waning in popularity. A few years ago boosting/bagging and other ensemble methods were very hot and neural networks were out of fashion; now neural networks are hot and the boosting hype has quieted down a bit. But ML is pretty much always there in some form, since learning from data is an important component of AI.
How does nitrogen research have the capability of solving all the world's problems?
The Bad Fortune of Some Ultrawealthy People
"Where is the evidence of that? I've ridden with plenty of Uber drivers who only drive a few hours a week."

If you turn down fares or only drive during certain peak times, you get pushed lower and lower into the queue when the robot decides who to send out on fares.

>This is far from being a dominant factor in employment status. If I offer a job for a fixed rate on Upwork and hire a contractor to do it, the fact that we didn't negotiate the rate doesn't make them an employee.

Except that the person on Upwork has the ability to negotiate, and choose not to take the gig. A driver for Uber does not get the chance to negotiate a fare with a customer and turn it down.
How does nuclear research have the capability of solving all the world's problems?
I've yet to see any evidence that human-like intelligence and computation speed are related in any way. There's a lot more to general intelligence than how fast numbers can be multiplied together.
Rock-Solid Shell Scripting in Scala
DockYard indeed supports the project. I work there full-time, primarily on Phoenix development (I'm the creator). We wouldn't be able to do what we're doing without their support, so I welcome the trend of companies supporting the OSS projects they use.
Most of Flask's heavy lifting is done by Werkzeug, which had its last PyPi release a month ago.

I use Werkzeug directly rather than Flask, so I can't speak to whether Flask is abandonware or not, but I'm very happy with Werkzeug. With very little effort, I get to build just enough framework for my application, without having to be shoehorned into someone else's tradeoffs.
IIRC, all headlines at the time of AOL-TW merger were new media (AOL) taking over old media (TW). What happened after the merger was primarily driven by dot-com crash and internal politics at AOL-TW.

Typically, in a combined name scenario at merger, the acquirer/bigger influencer's name is listed first. AOL Time Warner, Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco are some few joint names after mergers that come to my mind.

If you look at Dow and DuPont actions in last decade or so, you will notice that DuPont investors have been pushing for divestures, for example Chemours, and not acquisitions while Dow has been on acquisition binge, for example, Union Carbide, Lyondell.
No, it doesn't. Not when it comes to the question of whether someone is an employee or contractor.
What about Lisps then? They don't have the type system but you probably win on verbosity. I thought that Racket and other Lisps have some static typing/ADT support too, but I'm not familiar with them.

I first heard the term "nanopass" from this paper [1], which is done in Scheme:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=18108599075280184...

[1] Sarkar, Dipanwita, Oscar Waddell, and R. Kent Dybvig. "A Nanopass Framework for Compiler Education."
Will OpenAI be voluntarily subjecting itself to the same regulatory regime for machine learning research Sam Altman proposed earlier, or have they realized that would be a complete disaster?

http://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-2
The moral drawn from this particular case is a little less inspiring. The author was mistaken in drawing equivalence between his problem and the NP-complete one, and published a conclusion which was factually wrong. The mistake of equivalence is pointed out in the (years-old) comments, but no one knows whether it's significant.

Meanwhile, graph theory was aware of a polynomial-time solution to the guy's actual problem all along.
I would oversee the product design and development, and the business guy would do marketing & sales, and we should work together on finance, hr (at least at first). Vesting is definitely on.
Random Acts of Kindness
> There's secrecy within most for-profit entities, what makes AI so different?

It's not about AI vs other fields, it's about research vs. engineering. Admittedly, that line is more blurry than most, especially in highly technologically competitive fields like AI and graphics (and less blurry in fields where the research-to-implementation gap is larger, like PL or algorithmic complexity).
Maybe they want to draw attention away from their use of EC2.
> If we accepted that modern workers that flit from job to job and project to project are here to stay and gave them a real safety net without all the nasty ideological baggage, we could come closer to achieving the dream of the fluid, frictionless, task-oriented labor force that some economists have thought we should have for decades. Instead we have the Precariat.'

In many cases, a student's chosen major dictates their career options for the rest of their employed lives. The costs of switching knowledge-based jobs is hurting job market responsiveness and driving social inequality.

Fundamentally, the model of "learn as a kid - do as an adult" is obsolete. The world is far too complicated and moving far too fast. We need to strip down basic childhood education and publicly support adults learning throughout life. It doesn't have to be easy... it will still take years to switch domains. But that's a lag of 1-2 years for adults to retrain vs encouraging a new generation in highschool and waiting for them to pass through college.
Have you ever used F#'s type providers? The idea of an external environment (for example, a Web API or a specific SQL database and schema) lifted directly into the type system is pretty powerful. I'm familiar with Slick's typed SQL statements (currently using them in a project) which use a hefty dose of implicits and macros, and it kinda approaches the power of the SQL type provider, but its still incredibly clunky and trying to debug anything is a huge PITA.

A co-effect system is like a type provider on steroids: any aspect of the environment in which a system executes can be lifted onto the type system. This could be anything from GPU or specialty sensor availability to data security requirements.

It would allow for things like code sharing between scala & scalajs without needing to set up complicated SBT code sharing projects. You would have a scalajs main, and a scala main, and any piece of code whose type is permissible in both scalajs and scala is automatically shareable. It would also allow for cross-executable optimization. There is often a lot of code that could be optimized away from current executables if the compiler only knew more about side effects. You could eliminate dead code that goes across a wire between client and server because knowing exactly what the client/server interactions are, the compiler can know what is actually dead code.

Maybe it is possible to do some of the above with some implicit wizardry that I'm just not familiar with, and maybe it could be done with compiler and build system tricks without modifying the base language, but honestly even if it could I would still prefer co-effects. It took me one read of a blog post to really grok co-effects, whereas I've been using Scala for well over two years now and still have trouble understanding how implicits are working in the code I'm using.

For more info, you could read his blog post or academic papers linked in the blog post: http://tomasp.net/blog/2014/why-coeffects-matter/
Aside from what was mentioned, you can also self-host perforce at a relatively low cost (provided you don't need more than 20 users, as that's all perforce's free license supports).

I personally host a perforce server on google compute engine for around $15 a month (g1-small + whatever size persistent disk you want). Relatively easy to set up (they provide repositories for ubuntu and fedora iirc), configuration is largely interactive when setting up or through the P4Admin tool (which allows you to very easily setup permissions, depots, etc).

I know that isn't fully managed like github and doesn't provide issue tracking, wikis, etc, but I've found it fairly easy to deal with if you know a bit of how to setup a linux VPS.
Suppose you're a researcher doing something cool at Microsoft. If some OSS project sees your academic paper "Hey, that's awesome, I want to try this out in my new project!" you have to say "Sorry, Microsoft owns patents on everything I did, you're gonna have to pay a few million dollars for a license."
> Inflation has been subdued for years and has recently declined further

The reality is the free ride on inflation can't last forever and if the Fed fails to predict the future it can get pretty grim.

Similarly, there are a number of bubble like portents such as resource prices that are showing an excess of capital is being malinvested.

Its just one of those situations where you have to hope the professionals predict the future correctly.

> Labor participation among prime age adults remains lower than before the recession.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11300060

Its pretty clear the 90s it leveled off and now its dropping. It peaked 15+ years ago. It has nothing to do with the recession but rather, frankly.

I know it seems that way from the media but the fact is it leveled off ~25 years ago and began to drop ~15 years ago. The difference b/t the highest point and 1990 is very similar to normal noise.
What is interesting about this whole thing is precisely the second point: Are interest rates really the best tool to alter monetary policy? What's the real transmission mechanism by which anything the fed does affect the economy.

The view I'd most like tested is Scott Sumner's, who thinks that there's no such thing as running out of ammunition while trying to provide monetary stimulus: If a central bank wants to create inflation, all they had to do is print money and actively spend it, buying bonds, stocks, anything. It's not what a majority of economists believe, but at the same time, his model is very predictive. Unconventional monetary policy, like what Japan has been doing, has changed indicators in Japan in ways that decades of traditional intervention failed to do.

Either way, there's been so much talk about rate raising, that unless we think markets are very bad at prediction, I'd be very surprised much changed in the market if rates moved up a quarter of a point: The uptick has been priced into the stock prices already. It'd be news if it didn't happen.
Every agile story should have a testable completion point, agreed upon by development and the customer. If whether or not the story is "done" is vague and arguable, it's not good enough to do.

One of the big problems here, and where QA professionals can add real value, is defining that "done" point. Customers are often not very good at it. Their idea of what they want is too vague. They want developers to just build something, and they accept or reject it when they see it (and fault developers for not building it right).

But really, all story completion criteria should be testable, and developers should be able to demonstrate the tests. The job of QA shouldn't be to test, but to make sure the developers are actually testing what they claim to test.
Thank you for this comment (one of the more valuable ones in the whole thread).

> Bottom line: real world use should be tested, but this is expensive and neither side wants to pay for it.

Agreed, but it would be good for a company the size of VW to at least test one car with a new engine platform in real life conditions especially after major upgrades to the emission platform. If a magazine can afford to test 9 vehicles then you'd think that VW could afford to test at least one.

> Regarding compliance department complicity, the biggest factor in my mind is two-fold: You test for compliance with regulations and you have limited time. You ensure that the internal test parameters match the external regulatory test.

Ok for the during-the-production-run case but also for the very first time a new platform comes online? Wouldn't you want to know what the engine does in real life rather than just on the test stand? In other words, does the actual real life impact matter so little to companies that have 'green' written all over their brochures that they'd rather not know if they were cheating?

Would the compliance department at your employer take this as a wake-up call and at least run a single sample through an actual road test to see how their theories hold up in practice?

> You don't have funding to do real world tests.

How expensive would real world tests be for those engines that are 'the most suspect' based on the measured values during the simulated cycle?

> You believe the documents you are given, as they have been signed by responsible adults.

The word 'believe' is not in my vocabulary when I do an audit. I tend to take a very dim view of people that ask me to believe stuff and with the kind of money riding on your average deal I'd be a very sore loser indeed if I ever had to use the defense 'I believed what they said' when reality is found out to be contrary to what I was told. Trust but verify.

> Regarding what competitors knew and when: I haven't seen a discussion of exactly how much better these engines were than competitors.

Depending on the make and model, there are even some that are worse but they pass the tests as well and apparently - what we know to date - do not contain software that outright detects the test cycle and then runs the engine under a different regime.

> Regarding the scandal in general: The public has been demanding better and better automotive safety and quality represented by government regulations, voting with dollars, and lawsuits. It takes time for these lessons to be internalized, and different corporations and internal groups do this at different speeds. If you are the largest automaker in the world it is kind of natural to think that everything must be ok! (See also: GM, Toyota)

Yes, that's the kind of thinking that got other manufacturers in trouble already. Surely such a thing would not happen at our company... I've seen this mentality in practice and it always puzzles me. There is no such thing as 'too big' when it comes to stuff like this, in fact, when you're big the multiplier is larger so the incentives to color outside the lines are larger.
To be fair the exact meaning of Volkswagening is to fake the behavior during official tests. Example: http://qz.com/515100/samsung-is-accused-of-volkswagening-its... Note that volkswagening.com was registered 20 days after the scandal, but is available for bid, if you want to do something fun with it.
Faked News: El Chapo Not Declaring War on ISIS
They control for "duh". Have you read the paper?
Among industrial companies like in the OP, GE, under Jack Welch, proposed to buy/merge with Honeywell in the late 1990s. It was shot down by regulators. http://www.economist.com/node/687696
I'm sorry the government is taking away your microbeads and oppressing you.
It is very kind of you to explain the situation to me.

Except that I've actually met the infamous Roko, and given your shitty explanation I seem to have a better handle on the issue than you do.

So, think about what that means for a second. Without knowing anything about me, your first reaction to seeing me disagree with you was to assume that I simply do not understand the issue as well as you do, and then to proceeded to lecture me on it in the most simplest and infantile way possible.

That right there? That kind of arrogance which makes you speak over whomever you are talking to in order to shove your view into their face, all the while assuming that you need to explain the most basic things to them? That's why I can't stand LWers. That's why you guys reek of being a cult with no actual interest in rationality.

But since you are so DESPERATE to defend Elizer (when I have not once said that I dislike him - something else that you would have noticed if you bothered to LISTEN), I'll let him speak for himself. Here's an excerpt on him talking about the basilisk.

"To reduce the number of hedons associated with something that should not have hedons associated with its discussion, I will refer to the subject of this discussion as the Babyfcker. The Babyfcker will be taken to be associated with UFAIs; no Friendly AI worthy of the name would do that sort of thing.

Point one: Suppose there were a flaw in your argument that the Babyfcker can't happen. I could not possibly talk publicly about this flaw.

...

Point four: If I could go back in time and ask Roko to quietly retract the Babyfcker post without explanation, I would most certainly do that instead. Unfortunately you can't change history, and I didn't get it right the first time."

You can read the rest of the rant here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LessWrong/comments/17y819/lw_uncens...

I'll humbly let the readership of HN decide for themselves what they think of this sort of philosophy.

Peace.
In reality, the market is usually the solution to the tragedy of the commons. In the case of the original, creating a propertization scheme and allowing the market to trade on the property and giving individual owners the responsibility for stewardship gives people incentive to not have their sheep overgraze, and this is better than having a central authority decide how the land should be used, which buts against the knowledge problem, or worse, capture.

The tragedy of the commons is somewhat distinct to regulation of things which directly cause harm (in the extreme example, murder) which we generally don't consider to be part of the 'free market'.
Is this just a loss-leader for their backup/storage service? I am a big fan of not being the product, but how does this make money?
The near term danger of AI isn't in hyperintelligent SkyNet like systems, it's in human controlled autonomous weapon systems and "stupid AI"

What you should be fearing is military drones being given the ability to make decisions on targets or to fire, even with human assistance, and these systems won't just reside in the hands of large governments either.

Already police and militaries around the world are using abstracted forms of force, wherein target are identified with algorithms, and then force trained on those targets

What's do you think is going to happen first, SkyNet, or a predator imaging drone telling a human operator falsely that the current image is a terrorist?

What's going to happen first? SkyNet, or self driving cars putting millions of people out of jobs because of a lack of demand for drivers in transportation, or manufacture of cars? (I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it will be very very disruptive)

If SkyNet is a threat, it's 50 or 100 years off I think. "AI" as it is now, is no where near the capability people are talking about. It's sheer hyperbole.
They keep talking about raising rates based on the notion the markets and economy have more than fully recovered, which is not entirely true (we just didn't like the old metrics so we changed how we measure things)[1].

It feels dangerous to change rates based on flawed data points (and also makes the Fed Reserve look to be playing partisan politics to help spin the narrative of "everything's fine").

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/unemployment-rate-w...
I'm sure if OpenAI ever produces people with anything interesting to contribute to the alignment problem, MIRI will happily collaborate. That $1bn commitment must be disappointing to some people though.
There are many dystopic future possibilities as automation eats jobs.

There's also a few positive ones, and I hope we can move towards them. One way would be to shift from taxation of human labour to taxation of the means of production. Another way is if access to quality of life products becomes so cheap that they require very little labour to earn.

If you extrapolate the progress of solar power, 3D printing, and synthetic meat, you can imagine a machine that is cheap to produce, but which would make each human completely self-sustainable. Not needing to work to put food on the table every single goddamn day would transform our society quite a lot in a positive way.
Its not a bad idea but its not better than existing products [e.g. TextSecure] in terms of actual privacy.
Growth rates in nature are never exponential. They are sigmoidal. Sigmoids look very exponential when you're in the middle of them, but we are starting to see the level of moore's law (yeah yeah, it's technology not ICs, still sigmoidal)

So, yeah, we're not too far off from the end of the road for silicon lithography. We've had quite a good run, and we've advanced so, so far from the humble beginnings 60 years ago.

With each generation of chips, with ever shrinking process size, the designs get harder and harder. At some point soon, we're going to decide that we just can't improve this technology any further. That silicon-lithography based computers just aren't going to get any better.

So what happens then? What happens to Intel, and all the other semiconductor vendors when this year's newly released chips aren't any better than last year's chips?

Is the market going to accept that? Will it be OK for Apple to say to everyone that the iPhone 20 (or whatever) is as good as it is going to get, and no new whizzy features are going to be implemented?

I think the investors will file lawsuits, and all the heads of the technology companies will be replaced with people who are going to try harder, and use some other, better, technology instead to keep the profits rolling in.

And what is that going to be? Molecular nanotechnology. Precise placement of individual atoms to create materials and structures with superior properties to what we have now.

And that will enable a whole bunch of things, including AGI.
Not to mention: if everything is encrypted using your password as a key, how do your friends see your posts? Are they encrypted for each friend with that friend's public key?
> What about Lisps then?

That's what I'm using at the moment, but I'm really missing the strict typing. It's often hard to debug even the simple passes if they're constructing invalid trees. A type system would have picked it up easily.

For this reason I'm working on a hybrid DSL which combines all the power of a Nanopass-like visitors language and a Hindley-Milner type inference with a little twist to overcome the expression problem. Plus all the bells and whistles like an enforced totality, combined with locally allowed imperative things (updating hash maps, accumulating data destructively in lists, etc.).
NOW there are LEDs on the market. I'm a bit of bulb person and have tried all sorts of LEDs. The other problem is that many of the LED bulbs used to look bad if they were not in a shade. Fortunately that situation has also improved.