skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I suspect the timing of this (in the middle of massive anti-immigrant xenophobia) is not coincidental. Of course, sometimes people can manage to do the right thing for the "wrong" reasons.

This proposal, at least as described in the article, seems like a great idea. Such a minimum wage would improve (although not fully rectify) the abusive relationship between employers and H-1B workers, while at the same time protecting the interests of American workers by ensuring that their competitors will not be dreadfully underpaid.

Obviously this would be bad for a lot of corporations which currently abuse the program, which is why it will never pass.
Is that possible? They're much lighter than water and super tiny. Is there even a way to know that you got all of them? You'd almost have to run the affected water through a still.
My window manager is Xmonad, and restarting it after a configuration change does feel like hot code swapping: since the configuration file is actually Haskell code, it gets recompiled.

The Yi editor has similar capabilities.

I think hot code swapping has less to do with the language, and more to do with whatever surrounds it.
Ask HN: Fair equity split after prototype and First client?
Hi, I am a dev, I have been working (slowly) on a side project by myself for 3 years. I have a working prototype (11k loc), and I am about to land a first paying client ($5k/year). I want to find a business person to help me take this from a techy project to a succesful startup. What's a right equity split at this stage? 50-50 doesn't sound right. I was thinking 75-25 was ok. Any idea, past experience?
> Someone has to say it, lest anyone reading this for the first time gets the wrong impression.

Sorry what? You have to say that isn't outstanding, unless some one gets the impression he is?

Maybe this is crazy idea, but if Elizier wasn't outstanding... wouldn't that be something people would figure out for themselves? On the otherhand if people are reading his works, and walking away with the impression that he is outstanding, couldn't it simply be that it is? And even so, who are you to say that is wrong?

On the other hand, if there really are authors who write about similar things,but better than Yudkowsky I would be interested in reading (I haven't found any).

So, since you claim to know of such things, could you pick something Yudkowsky has written about and name me another who does it better?
This is really the key to comfort at a standing desk.

Order the best gel mat on the market: the Wearwell Ultrasoft Diamond-Plate Anti-Fatigue And Safety Mat - Black With Yellow Chevron Border.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VEF51E0/

My company was happy to pay for it once I explained the productivity benefits to them.
Do you have any disclosure to make? are you involved with the taxi industry for example?
While Hamiltonian Circuit is certainly harder, I don't think a Hamiltonian Circuit solver would be a Secret Santa Solver in all cases - two disjoint sets could have a Secret Santa solution but not a Hamiltonian graph solution.
I'll take your smalls ;)

One advantage to being a small built female at these events, t-shirts in my size are always left.
Comprehend’s Rick Morrison on the Importance of Asking Questions
It absolutely could have changed since I've used it. I'm hearing you might not need an "account" any more but you still need the app and/or some kind of quick verification? Probably worth checking out again.

In either case, I like that with Wallet you don't even need an app.
Light quality really does depend on the bulb. A lot of bulbs are of a color temperature that's neither warm enough, nor close enough to daylight to have a nice feeling. Personally, I've found that the 5500k daylight bulbs to give a much nicer light than even incandescent, but a lot of that is subjective, and most places don't really have a good place to compare light quality.
I still firmly believe this is a large part of the reason for having devs carry pagers.

Maybe in better companies than I worked it that isn't the case, but devs shouldn't be your 24/7 support staff.
As a former regulator of that sector, they were nearly as bad as BP, which was well known for a laundry list of violations long before Deepwater Horizon.
I hope more great researchers recognize the importance of the mission and take part!
We've been pretty happy to enslave animals in semi-symbiotic relationships for thousands of years. It's about the same as that.
And the due technical overview: https://whisp.ly/static/whisplyTechnicalOverview_20151201.pd...
The relationships of large organizations can be surprisingly complex; consider Apple and Samsung. YC isn't large, of course, but Infosys is. The information content of the OpenAI funding announcement for immigration questions is probably zero. (No special knowledge behind this comment, just a general observation.)

Edit: Please don't break the HN guidelines by complaining about downvoting. Downvotes to your comment upthread are not because of any "Infosys brigade"; they're most likely because it combined oversimplification with negativity and because it points discussion toward a pre-existing controversy that is off topic here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Ask HN: Is dokku-alt maintained anymore?
dokku-alt (https://github.com/dokku-alt/dokku-alt) was created to make Dokku the original project more functional. As of right now, dokku-alt's latest commit was in April, and the main project is getting frequent updates. If I was installing dokku on a server, which project should I use?
I can't be the only person who remembers taping a penny to a Columbia House mailer.
A Paradigm Shift for the Motor Cortex?
It's not necessarily the answer to AI, but it works remarkably well. Is it Skynet or the Terminator yet? No.

There are different ideas for what constitutes AI. Expert systems and knowledge-based reasoners? Pattern-recognizer black boxes? Chatbots? AGI?

Over the years the concept of AI shifted. Until recent years "AI" was mostly used for things like A* search, creating algorithms that play turn-based table games for example (see the Russell-Norvig book), symbolic manipulation, ontologies etc., a few years ago it began to also refer to machine learning like neural networks again.

Neural networks are good at what they are designed for. Whether they will lead to the path to human-like artificial intelligence is a speculative question. But symbolic manipulation alone won't be able to handle the messiness of sensory data for sure. I think neural nets are much better suited for open-ended development than hand engineered pipelines that were state of the art until recently (like extracting corner points, describing them with something like SIFT, clustering the descriptors and using an SVM over bag-of-words histograms). Hand engineering seems too restrictive.
Interested to hear more on this. My feet absolutely kill me around the house in the evening if I go barefoot too much. How long does it take to really build up this foot strength and do you have any support for this?
It files a refund, basically. It just happens to be a refund for a non-existent initial purchase.
And that the name dropping would have been the clickbait headline in most articles.
Except for that bit at the end.
While we're at it maybe we should address the possibility of overpopulation on Mars?

Andrew Ng thinks people are wasting their time with evil AI:

https://youtu.be/qP9TOX8T-kI?t=1h2m45s
http://blog.codinghorror.com/
It is no secret that both Mozilla and Django have a strong politically correct / social justice culture. This makes the two organizations more compatible.
You have the poles reversed.
Spideroak Kloak: Zero-Knowlege Social Networking
Molecular nanotechnology
Hmm. I believe "Just, wow" means that there is nothing more to explain about the event in question worth expressing amazement about, as it is extremely self-evident.

Sometimes also used to express being at a loss for additional words.
Atheist world views aren't true (in general). I know dozens who (claim to) believe in Darwinism and evolution and yet claim that we can (and should) protect species from extinction.

Yet an argument based on Darwinism that we can't fight extinctions by compensating for maladaptation is so blindingly obvious ... Compensating for maladapted species will need an amount of resources that evolves exponentially over time, even if the numbers of the "saved" species don't increase. Therefore it will fail, it is only a question of time.

Atheists at least see that particular myths are utilitarian. To make a society work and produce, for instance. Or to make a society fight, like some other religions. But they fail to look in the mirror and see that their myths are utilitarian as well, and when they are true, that's not a great factor in their adoption. Belief systems are like computer viruses : correctness, correct use of the system, style of the code doesn't matter (in fact it is often an obstacle). What matters is whether the code spreads.

And just like atheist myths can be true, religious myths can be true. The bible contains quite a bit of true history, and I would argue at least a bit of good advice. It also contains lots of instructions for various things, from architecture to agriculture, and those instructions work, even if they can be said to not be perfectly optimal. Likewise, you can make an argument that the quran contains instructions for warfare that are certainly not stupid, even if some of those tactics make "realpolitik" look like two girls trying to feed bambi.

Of course the above is the non-cynical view of their position. The cynical view would be that conservation is not in fact done to help species, but rather to increase the luxuries surrounding rich conservationists. That conservation efforts are just a very expensive 50" tv, and the beneficiaries of conservation efforts will be chucked in the bin when something else catches our fancy just like said tv.
Not true. Humans can adapt to many environments by pulling in training from other related environments and applying it to the new data. Some call this generalised learning, but I think it points more to our ability to shape everything we know to any given problem - something 'beyond' just generalising.
Its going to work until it doesn't. You don't feel too bad about ants you step on, do you? Even if you're not purposely walking on them.
As someone with only passing familiarity of the concept of "guanxi," is it even possible to grow a business to that size in China and be that successful without being corrupt or participating in/facilitating corruption? Or at that level of the game is it entirely possible to succeed with "legal" forms of guanxi?

Seems like a cultural concept where to get ahead it is very much "damned if you do, damned if you don't" because of what I imagine is an inherently escalating nature to it.
My real concern about AI is that generalised Moore’s law means we only have a relatively short time to plan. Assuming that computers continue to double in processing power every 18 months or so, then we only have 10 years where we go from 1% human level to human level. This really is not a long time to make good decisions.
ELS: latency based load balancer
How to Choose a Processor
The idea is not that we should build and (try to) suppress a sentient AI; that would be a bad idea for numerous reasons. However, we don't necessarily need to build a sentient AI in the first place; we can build a process that has reasoning capabilities far above human without actually having agency of its own.
Uber seeks to head off lawsuits with new binding driver agreement
That's what users are for!
This is an often repeated statement, but I'm curious if it's true or not, ie., has this been seen anywhere?
On the plus side, Ted Cruz (who I despise terribly) is sponsoring some quality H1B reform legislation (which reduces the number of H1B visas available, and requires compensation be a minimum of $110K/year).

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3014365/it-careers/sen-...
The X-Men: Apocalypse Trailer Is Here
Removing dedicated QA (whether they do manual testing like in the article or write automated tests) and forcing the developers to take this on themselves is okay. Alternatively, I've had a lot of success with having development teams take operational responsibility for their code. They are not only naturally incentivized to take on automating QA, they also move toward continuous deployment and become more involved in thinking about the product. The safety and speed that's gained is seeming to result in teams that stay small. It's not for everyone, and caused attrition early on, but talking about these practices during interviews has attracted the right people.
Microbeads were banned in Minnesota several months ago.

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/05/05/microbeads
Whether it's the "singularity" or just software naturally improving over time and taking on more "thinking" work, there's going to be a huge and insurmountable unemployment problem in the near future. The market values human thought/labor to the extent that it's cheaper or more effective than an automated solution. When that isn't the case, you can fill in the blanks. That, to me, is the scary part of AI.

It doesn't sound like this project has any scope to address this practical concern, which to me, is largely economic. I don't see how universal access to AI puts food on the table.
There is no natural cutoff. If they become too creepy and make us emotionally attached, we'll change them so they don't freak us out in that way.
> does anybody really think a human can run through 800 test cases better than a computer can?

Of course not. But automated tests are just the entry ticket to the release process.

A computer can't replicate the irrationality, laziness and guile of a human end-user. That's what good QA engineers test.
> what kind of light bulbs are people buying these days

You can't get incandescents anymore in the UK, and I've just bought some halogens in the same form factor. 25× more expensive upfront, but even nicer light.
This is one reason some have called for a third category of worker:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/07/uber-economy-re...

Germany has one already: http://www.npr.org/2015/06/26/417675866/service-jobs-like-ub...

Of course, this would be much less of an issue if we had a guaranteed income, or even a lesser version of it for being between jobs; something like unemployment insurance, but only for people in this new category (which would have much less stringent requirements.) A universal health care system would also lessen their burden; ACA / Freelancer Union rates are still bananas expensive.

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.
Email me! :)
Who's Carl Gustaf?
Huh? The current situation seems to be working pretty well for the ruling class over there. They control the media, and thus local public perception. How exactly would more democratic forms of government benefit them?
Elon Musk launches OpenAI non-profit research group
I think it's 'malpractice' risk. Like, if a lawyer give bad legal advice on a forum, and someone reads it and follows it and then loses a ton of money because of it, and then the reader sues the lawyer for malpractice.

The plaintiff would never win the case. But lawyers like to avoid being the target of malpractice claims, even if they're super-weak / spurious / whatever.

I think that is the situation.

As a lawyer, I personally don't mind writing about the law or answering general questions on the internet. I wouldn't answer someone's specific questions about their personal legal situation though (without an engagement letter).
Hi Peter, thank you so much for doing this!

I'm a student on F-1 visa. Am I allowed to form an LLC and sell products / offer services, while revenue from said products or services will be kept in the company bank account, without me pulling a salary?

Thank you!
> It doesn't sound like this project has any scope to address this practical concern, which to me, is largely economic. I don't see how universal access to AI puts food on the table.

Benevolent AI dictator that runs farm machinery and food distribution networks?

I only half joke. At some point, we're going to need to ditch the puritanical bullshit that work is required, and realize that GDP as a metric is hogwash. Quality of life, happiness, those are what need to be measured and delivered on.
Ah ok - that's what I heard through Capital Factory. However, I can't imagine it would be more than 2 (you said a couple) orders of magnitude off.

Do you know approximately what the amount was?
http://hermiene.net/short-stories/i_have_no_mouth.html
Given the whirlwind of questions that came up, Peter wanted to help as many HNers as possible within the time available. Brief replies were the only option.

We've already heard back from Peter that the biggest problem was not being able to go deeper, and are going to explore options for how to do that. The takeaways from today are (a) there's clear demand in the community and (b) he would like to do more. That's an exciting combo, so we'll figure something out.

p.s. Please don't hijack the top comment in a thread by replying to it with something unrelated. (We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10720155.)
In particular, this summary graphic is telling:

http://img3.auto-motor-und-sport.de/Abgastest-Wertung-fotosh... (blurry, sorry)

At the top of the NOx scale we have a VW TDI engine (albeit in an Audi Quatro application).

Near the bottom of the NOx scale we have... a VW TDI engine.

In other words, VW already had the capability to eliminate the emissions through design, but chose to cheat the tests instead. That is rather damning evidence, and serves as a rebuttal for those who think that VW is somehow being unfairly targeted.

Clearly, many other companies also need to lower their emissions, and regulators need to adopt meaningful tests. But to cheat the tests that do exist, and for no clear need (except possibly profit margins) is inexcusable.
There is a role for regulation and collective choice. Take HFT as an example. If everyone competes for lower latency access, eventually everyone locates their bot at the same exchange. If everyone puts a lower limit on latency (e.g. by coiling fiber optic cable), the latency playing field is leveled and new areas of competition emerge.

Open technology will empower the expression of many human wills, individual and collective. Human wills are today constrained and empowered by many human-imagined systems of thought, and we can invent new ones. Will there be an AI which explores the possibility space of constraints on AI-using humans?
You're over-glorifying humans. We're still just a savannah ape and our skills reflect that.
> While we're at it maybe we should address the possibility of overpopulation on Mars?

We've already fucked this planet so I sincerely hope a few people are thinking of ways to avoid fucking another one.
I've used borax when working with very greasy things. It has a good abrasive feel to it.
Google vid google chat, aim chat, both from pidgin client.
See I think that's exactly where it becomes complicated. Can an entity with reasoning capabilities far beyond that of humans have its agency suppressed successfully? And is it ethical to do so or is that internally designed suppression somehow ethically different from the external suppression applied against human slaves?

If you could engineer a human being with his/her agency removed so that you could use their reasoning skill without all that pesky self will would that be ethical?
It might be an incredibly bad idea to have multiple AGIs everywhere in the world, but that's the least bad that I can see too.

Also this is amazing, making serious effort towards AGI is what we need. We'll play with RNNs configurations for a long time, but I think it's a good call to fund people who think about the broad picture.
This is why I hope the experiment in Finland works out such that it is feasible to expand minimal guaranteed income to everyone. In our current state it is essentially fearmongering. The singularity will happen just like flying cars happened, but eventually there will be major social changes around more automation and less necessity for humans to work.
After reading this article all that remained was an unpleasant aftertaste from self-aggrandizing and arrogant delivery.

But perhaps I don't pass the bar to be considered an intended audience this was meant to be addressed to.

Signed, C# developer.
White Elephant Rules
Off topic: But I have always wondered why we have a threashold to hit before we can downvote comments - but why can we never downvote posts? Or is the karma threshold just really high to have that function?
It's not meant to do so.

The threat of superintelligent computing is a serious risk to humankind, and this threat magnifies if there are few AIs and those few are only accessible by the rich and/or powerful.

I imagine that Musk would rather live in a world in which superintelligent AI never comes into existence, but since he has no power to stop that future, this seems like the next best alternative.
You were born with millions of years of training and still couldn't care for yourself without many years of personalized training.
Except that (right or wrong) we most certainly weigh that against their intelligence.
Multi-agent systems and human-swarm interaction, with Magnus Egerstedt
While a great short story and should be required reading for sci-fi fans, there's a big difference between the singularity and omnipotence.
> it'll compete against the Germans (BASF, Bayer)

I wonder how come BASF and Bayer are still in business, post-WW2. From the wiki page of Carl Wurster (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Wurster), the guy who re-established BASF in the early 1950s, out "of the ashes" of the infamous IG Farben:

> Wurster retained links to those he had worked with as part of the Nazi war machine and on 6 February 1959 as chairman of BASF he hosted a reunion banquet for the veterans of the pre-1945 IG Farben Vorstand. The event was attended by Otto Ambros, Heinrich Bütefisch, Fritz Gajewski, Max Ilgner, Friedrich Jähne, Carl Krauch, Hans Kühne, Wilhelm Rudolf Mann, Christian Schneider and Fritz ter Meer as well as Carl Bosch's widow.[4]

All of those guys were Nazis, some of them convicted war criminals.
The problem is that at motorway driving speeds, where air resistance is dominant, the power required is proportional to the cube of the velocity. Driving at 100 mph instead of 80 mph will halve your range.
In that case, way to go, that is very impressive! I'm surprised the bounty was so low, honestly.

In response to your first comment, I should clarify that checking for a valid HTTPS URL SHOULD be sufficient, barring implementation errors in the browser. Of course, if the browser is insecure, all bets are off wrt web security. Implications may range far beyond phishing attacks in that case.
Nitrogen research.

Haber Bosch is a primary example. Nitrogen both creates and destroys.

Look harder. ;)
I agree with the researchers that expanding the sample size should help support whether this effect is substantive. They don't comment on any mechanism of action, and gadolinium contrast agents can be detrimental without an MRI exam.