skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For a long time I thought of horses as basically cows you can ride. Then I saw a video of a horse playing with a giant ball:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emxI-nRGWBE

It's acting more like a dog than a cow. And there are many other videos of horses playing and doing tricks like dogs can. My opinion of horses greatly improved. Thinking about it, I shouldn't have found it surprising. Horses are herd/pack animals like dogs, so they naturally have social skills, and despite being herbivores they are still mammals, so their body language is at least somewhat similar to humans. And also like dogs, horses have been domesticated to work closely with humans. Most other domesticated animals are either solitary, or not required to work directly with humans. I think any domesticated mammal with both those properties will likely read human emotions. Even though the dog has the advantage of being a carnivore so it is more similar to humans, and being required to work more independently than the horse, putting more selection pressure on its communication skills, the horse still far exceeds popular animals like the cat in its ability to communicate with humans. If the dog is "man's best friend", I think the horse can be "man's second best friend".
I couldn't easily jump off Facebook, mainly because of a large contingent of overseas family. Also, a lot of private social events are purely shared on Facebook. Easiest thing to do was unsubscribe to literally everybody except said overseas family and 'Like+Follow' work-related fan pages (or whatever they're called these days.
Ask HN: Stale job posting and suggestion for getting a job at FB or Google?
Hi HN ,

I have started looking for new job and very much interested in a job at high performance organizations such as FB/Google/Netflix. Amazon is also great but I have heard few horror stories. I personally know a couple of folks who were not happy when they worked for Amazon.

Number one issue I see is stale job posting. I bookmarked few available jobs at FB/Google and 5 months later I still see them. I understand some of these jobs could be for green card processing of existing employees, however I am curious if job remains open for so long ?

1. How do avoid or identify stale job postings and one that have been open for green card applications ?

2. What are tips for getting job at FB/Google ?

I work in analytics domain and not looking for SWE jobs.

If any current or former employees can shed some light on how you landed job at these companies that will be super awesome.
Unfortunately, even if octave can replace MATLAB the language, it's going to take herculean effort to replace MATLAB the ecosystem. Replacing Simulink alone is a huge undertaking, let alone trying to replicate SimMechanics, or some of the other more niche toolboxes. Being able to run a control system block diagram on arbitrary hardware (ARM boards, etc) is huge in the controls world.

The places I see using MATLAB today rely on Simulink & SimMechanics, as well as the Control Systems toolbox and the computer vision packages. OpenCV can replace some of the CV stuff, but can't provide an integrated solution for the controls portion.
OK, what about a compromise: you can keep your conclusions private, you only need to disclose to me the raw data you used to reach such conclusions. Is that better?
Different Types of Features Learned by Each Neuron in Deep Neural Networks
I, in 2010.
This is the most alarming and interesting point for me:

"Facebook will market you your future before you’ve even gotten there, they’ll use predictive algorithms to figure out what’s your likely future and then try to make that even more likely. They’ll get better at programming you – they’ll reduce your spontaneity. And they can use your face and name to advertise through you, that’s what you’ve agreed to."

The order in which you are presented with items in your feed, which likes by which friends you see, your previous actions (most of which you cannot likely recall, but all of which facebook has a perfect memory), and many other details are not only used to advertise to you - they're used to build you into the type of person that will be more susceptible to advertising in the future.

Molding and shaping opinion and personality is nothing new, but it has never been this precise, this interactive, and this pervasive. The stimulus, response, and reward loop has never been tighter. Those who use these services are being trained to exhibit particular valuable traits and behaviors, and the level of control over these manipulations will only improve as data is collected and algorithms are refined.

If you've been using a service like Facebook for several years, they know who you have been at each point in time. Imagine you've traversed states A, B, and C and are predicted to be moving toward D. If state F or Z is more valuable (and can be arrived at from state D), then perhaps through several months of training you can be led to it instead. If you're not continually aware of each small nudge in a particular direction, then your mind is absorbing and adjusting to these changes without you knowing about it.

I'd love to read more about this, and am sort of morbidly fascinated by the methods by which these mechanisms operate, and just how powerful these types of control can get.
Cannot say that I've seen family act in ways I didn't expect on Facebook, but certainly have seen it with looser social relationships. I've unfollowed a lot of people because they shared their very strong, retrogressive views on everything from homosexual rights to certain religions. When you see these same people in real life, none of that really reflects in the conversations you have with them. As the other guys said, it's often best to be selectively ignorant.
Whenever I wake up (usually before noon).
Could this be explained by technical people using more ad-blockers? Or is it adjusted for ad-blockers?
I personally prefer base 2 units for file size. A 2GB file will take 2GB of memory when I load it in. Hard drive page sizes are also base two, 512 bytes for most drives and 4096 bytes (4K) for newer large capacity drives.

I also prefer base 2 for file transfer speeds just so it matches the file size convention. Fortunately most programs either default to base 2 or let you chose in the preferences.

Network line speeds are in base 10 (100Mbit ethernet is actually 100,000,000 bits/s) but there so much protocol overhead and other factors that comparing transfer speeds and line speeds is moot in most situations.
The problem with that line of argument is that it is trivially hypocritical. As someone else has pointed out, the constitutional prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment" would have been sufficient grounds.

It is also more complexly hypocritical, as his opinions are constrained by the Constitution only as much as those of the other justices, which is to say only when convenient.
This is a happy day. I am so, so, SO incredibly happy that that cranky, fucking asshole is dead. He was a terrible person, and a complete waste of space, even the space in his grave is too valuable.
It seems like the people most likely to accept this deal are the ones most likely to figure out they made a mistake (getting married) two years later.
Oxford London Lecture 2014: Keeping our secrets (Vid 38m:50s)
GitHub Users Find Women's Code Better Than Men's – Until They Know Who Wrote It
There are a lot of GNU Social servers - any recommendations?
Something the desktop era didn't have to bother with. You owned the device, the software, the storage. The web is sucking the world into its cloud for reasons that seem less and less relevant.
For some interesting history on animal behavior check this out. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
There’s still time to stop the TPP
I am considering it. I already removed this site from my bookmark bar and landing page. If I had to list my top three reasons:

HN has the "anything that's interesting" policy, which means I see a lot of stuff that only serves to distract me. I waste too much time reading newsy posts here or I catch myself following clickbait titles. I want to stay on top of the latest tech and that's all really. I've started using reddit more these days. Following subreddits gives me links that are more focused.

Two, I find it far too easy to be downvoted into oblivion here. I frequently type up a post, just to close the window before I hit reply. I know I'm just going to get downvoted/hidden/deleted for having a point of view that is from somewhere outside the primary demographic here. I then realize I've wasted my time and additionally I feel ostracized as well.

And the third.. this may seem kinda silly to most here.. is the name: Hacker News. Completely innocuous to computer programmers, but if "normals" see someone browsing a site named Hacker anything, it raises eyebrows. I was recently blocked from visiting this site in a foreign country, and I really can't describe the sort of sinking feeling I had when that happened. I suddenly realized where I was. My inner monologue went something like: "So now I'm going to be dragged to some foreign dungeon, for visiting a site that doesn't really care for my voice, to read articles that just distract me from focusing on my true interests. Why am I so stupid?"

Yeah, I'm calm now that I'm back home, but I'll sorta worry when I have to go back there again.

(I very nearly closed the window again. Hitting reply this time. You should hear the truth occasionally. Even if it's only a fleeting glimpse before I am deleted.)
Malnutrition and exposure leading to chronic ill health and reduced lifespan: priceless.
A reader emailed to suggest that we change the url from http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/us-world/article/Senior-Ass... to this more substantive obituary. That seems like a good idea. If anyone can suggest a better URL, we can change it again.
That's certainly the hope. But I'm not sure it will turn out as intended though. The thing about people on Facebook is that they are people on Facebook. It might capture some of who they are (or who they want people to think they are anyway) through the lens of social networking. But it's going to be at best a one dimensional view and I'm not sure how effective at summarizing or manipulating people (that part is coming later:).
I was trying to figure out how to respond to this. The best I could come up with was this: Mr. Rodgers would be disappointed in you.
Two decades ago we went to parties at people's apartments or houses. We also met at a few different diners and bars where you could wander in and run into someone you knew, or wait till someone you knew showed up. We ran into each other walking across campus -- there was no "distance learning" in the mid-80s (to speak of, anyway). We went in big groups to movies and concerts.

People in these sort of shifting sub-groups would split off or join new sub-groups as they were introduced by and to others in the larger social scene. It was quite interesting, actually. I met people from very different backgrounds and with very different interests than mine, which made the world a much bigger place.

And somehow this math and science geek ended up with a history and Russian degree, friends who make movies in Hollywood and have active roles on TV, a publisher, a bunch of artists who do their thing quietly, homemakers, lawyers, social workers, professors, and a guy who helped discover new elements with the Russians and works at Lawrence Livermore. Do all of them know each other? No, but a bunch of them do.

I had a facebook account for about a month six or seven years ago but quickly deleted it. I don't stay in touch with all these people still, but at least two dozen of them would open their home to me if I showed up on their doorstep. When I got divorced 10 years ago, I got some phone numbers and called a few of them. One even asked if I needed money(!) since the divorce led to bankruptcy, foreclosure, and lots of bad poems.

I honestly feel sorry for my daughter's generation (she's 27) because I see the reality of her social life and it's pathetic compared to mine - and I'm basically socially inept.

In sum, f* facebook and all the others. They contribute nothing of value compared to real interaction with real people in real places.
I haven't been this happy since Jerry Falwell died. When it comes to women, gays, people of color, they are both hopelessly lost causes. It is the generosity of the earth that even this abysmal human being will be returned back to nature through bacteria rotting his corpse, and reincorporating it. That's his best triumph as far as I'm concerned.

In his opinion, moral objection to homosexuality was the only justification needed to criminalize it. My moral standard is that haters should be hated. So I'm better than he is for simply not saying anything nice about the man. I'm not suggesting he should go to jail for his viciousness.

He was a bad person. I'm glad his dead. I wish it had happened sooner.
> Could this be explained by technical people using more ad-blockers?

I don't know, but I wouldn't think so. I don't use ad-blockers (never have), and I don't click many ads. I go around them or close them, but for the most part have learned to ignore them. The only ads I click on are targeted ads that are relevant to my interests. I would think that technical people are less likely to be duped into clicking them, but I wouldn't attribute it to ad-blockers.
I wonder if you injected fuel into a chamber between two of these if you could have a new design for a no-moving-parts pulse-jet.

Also, I'm having trouble imagining what this would look like in 3d.
This study should be expanded to include wild horses. Also if they could somehow measure "positive" reactions that would be interesting.

Domesticated horses are generally trained through fear; it is not surprising they react to angry faces. So it might also be interesting to conduct this same test on horses trained only with positive reinforcement techniques.
Clever predators don't force anything.
There are plenty of videos of cows also playing with balls and with others. Not kidding. Look for The Gentle Barn and Dudley the cow, for one example.
The desktop era still required you upgrading your software often enough to patch security issues and remain inside of support. I suppose the main advantage is that you still roughly got to pick when to upgrade. Also, the time between major UI shifts was long enough that by the time you absolutely needed to move from your current version, you were buying a new desktop. Rather than having the one you'd already been using randomly "mutate" from under you...
Strikingly (YC W13) Is Hiring DevOps / Ruby Dev (Shanghai, China)
* Contrary to how it was phrased in the WW, this seems to only affect serving in the Legislative branch and the Judicial or Executive branch at the same time. I don't think it in itself puts limit on serving in the Executive and Judicial branches simultaneously.

It doesn't - John Marshall served as the Secretary of State and Chief Justice of SCOTUS at the same time under John Adams.
Implying that it's ok to take advantage of people as long as you don't force it?
Assuming apples-to-apples JIT technology, Pawn would still be faster because it's a barebones coding environment. Its semantics are roughly similar to C, but with even fewer features. The only definite way to outdo that is with something like Terra[0] where the program has meta-level control over its own compilation and execution.

[0] http://terralang.org/
Nice, the high-performance computing company Amazon just acquired
Seems like a bug, shouldn't that return a Maybe? (the equivalent in Swift returns an Optional)
The Greatest African American and Afro-American Martial Artists in History
Of course horses can recognize some human emotions. Most humans, even ones who handle horses, can't read horse emotions well.

Horses are quite expressive, but their body language is alien. Horse facial expressions exist, but involve very quick eye movements, something discovered only about twenty years ago. Most of the bigger horse expressions are in ears, lips, tail, and carriage.

If horses don't get feedback from their humans indicating some understanding on the human side, they often stop trying to communicate. To learn how horses communicate, watch them in an open field for long periods. There are frequent subtle dominance displays. Not kicking, or even ears pinned back; often it's just slightly narrowed eyes and an eye-flick, and one horse will yield space to another. If a horse does that to you, putting hands on hips and giving the horse a hard stare says that you got the message and aren't backing down. Most horses get this. It's a compromise between horse body language and human body language; a pidgin, if you will. Horses recognize eye contact. You're much less likely to be bitten, even by a hostile horse, if you're looking at the horse's eye and they're looking at you.

It's quite possible to "speak horse" that way. "Talking with Horses", by Henry Blake, is useful.

Whether or not a horse understands human to human expressions depends on how much experience they have with humans. It's a second language for horses, after all. Horses that live in herd situations deal mostly with other horses, and may not be that attuned to humans. Ones in stall situations tend to be more people-oriented, by necessity. The parent article was about horses that deal with lots of different people, so they're likely to have figured out human expressions.
Like it or not, that trick's specifically enshrined and established in the Constitution. That same document Scalia claimed to defend to vigilantly. Probably there for good reasons.
> If you’re writing software for Boeing or for an iron lung, you may want to consider writing proofs.

If you're writing software for Boeing for an iron lung, you may already be using one of a few fully verifiable languages (like SCADE, Esterel) that don't even require proofs -- just a specification -- and have been in common use in safety-critical systems since the eighties. Dependent types are interesting, but they're not widely used simply because there are much more efficient ways of proving safety-critical systems 100% correct.

> using a modern type system will give you the most information and guarantees for the least amount of effort

I can agree with that one, but I don't agree with the implication that Haskell's type system (or ML's) is the right one for this purpose of giving the most information for the least effort.
Samsung warns customers not to discuss personal information in front of smart TV
I would just say that computer savvy people do not click on ads, and Silicon Valley has a concentration of said people.
Tesla Will Get Trampled by the Mass Market
Yes. I'm still just learning it myself - I've got to say it's a really nice break from writing C (which is most of my day job). Having a proper type system is really nice, and having type inference makes me feel like I'm coding in a dynamic language even though I'm not.

I'm currently building a CI tool (which will hopefully be open sourced once I get approval from our legal department) with a colleague of mine who mostly chose to use Rust because he needed an excuse to learn it...
I've actually met him and talked about his beliefs as well as read a lot of what he's written. I quite like him, but I think he frequently gets the broad strokes correct but misses on the details, and I don't think this is the first instance where he's done so.

> It's true that Rushkoff is making - and has always made - the dissenting point that perhaps the Internet should be more than a machine for extracting cash and attention from the people who use it.

And I'm disagreeing with the premise that it is just a cash extracting machine, because it is so only in the most simplistic and overly cynical of analyses. I get that it hasn't solved world hunger, and I get that there are many problems, but I think if Rushkoff understood how the web functioned at a deeper technical level he'd feel a lot less strongly about his beliefs. Similar to the Marxists that form the foundation of his beliefs, if he actually had to implement his ideas in real life he'd understand why they aren't a panacea.
How could it possibly be a serious comment, what's wrong with you, people?
Would it prove just as valid to say tech people don't click on ads?
Cool! Perhaps someone could cast a piece like this with concrete or baked clay inside a larger, sturdy building to display an alphanumeric message to future generations, only during specific alignments. I can see one potential benefit compared to hieroglyphs, tablets, pillars[0], and other megalithic messages that some of our ancestors left us; it would take different skills to warp its message than simply a chisel or spray paint. One fictional story that comes to mind, Indiana Jones' Staff of Ra[1], makes this seem like even if only for a treasure hunt game, it would make for a fun story later on.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka_Pillars

1: http://indianajones.wikia.com/wiki/Headpiece_to_the_Staff_of...
Dudley looks a little smarter and more active than cows I see locally, but not nearly as much as a horse. Most of his "playing" looks more like scratching/rubbing type behavior, the same as you see with motorized cow brushes.
Depression is like a bad weather.

You're under it and it seems like nothing you can do - which is essentially true.

That is - it's hard to fix "bad weather" to change it to "good weather".

The universal truth about bad weather that eventually it is going to change to good weather.

Although knowing this doesn't help when it's pouring rain, cold and miserable all over.

The action plan - is the fact of bad weather presence does not mean that you need to stop living.

And it also does not mean that you need to stop doing stuff you were doing before.

And it also mean that you don't really need to change the weather but keep doing your best to keep going your way.

In other words - it sucks, but let it be and keep going.

The worst thing to do when weather is freezing - is to sit and wait for weather to change. We all know why.

So, let it be.

Keep going.

That's it.
>Some of you seem to forget that people who have different opinions than you are also people."

I think you have something in common with the people who don't like Scalia.
> And as such, they have the right to try to get those opinions represented.

At best, Scalia represented the opinions of an opinionated and influential but not truly representative minority of the population.

Now - there's nothing in the constitution that says explicitly that the Supreme Court should be a representative body.

But the political reality is that judges aren't picked for the SC because they're the best legal minds of their generation - they're chosen for their legal minds and for their politics.

IMO, in a representative democracy, the political values of the judiciary and especially of the SC should be broadly similar to those of the population.

Did Scalia bring the SC closer to the values of the median population, or did he move it away from the median?
Can we please stop with all of the political articles. HN is a place for hacker news.
This ain't news to me; I'm sure just about most self-aware persons are capable of (or already have) come to the conclusion that social media is cancerous for a positive mental state.

That's not even mentioning the data mining and privacy issues that arise from such high profile companies having access to such thorough personal information. For them, it's business as usual and a rather understandable response. If you have such info at hand, why not use it to further expand your business?

Unfortunately this thought process results in active harm to users (disregarding purposeful malice altogether). I am so thankful that I ditched social media consumption back in high school.