skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This has been a running joke on the Verge's main podcast for the last few months. People have confirmed that "Hey Siri", "OK Google" "Hey Alexa" and "Hey Cortana" all work on their respective platforms when the hosts blurt them out, and can trigger various mischievous actions. And that's a podcast listened to by comparatively few people. Imagine the mayhem if someone were to do this on, say, the Super Bowl.
You are ignorant or dishonest if you think "killing" a plant and animal is in any way equatable.

Edit: Even supposing plants have the ability to suffer and experience pain in the same way non-human animals do, you should be immediately compelled to stop their abuse, for the raising of livestock "injures" and "kills" many, many more plants than if you had just eaten them for sustenance directly.

Have a look at this brief article, which explains and dispells your confused assumption quite well - http://pixellant.com/adaptt/insipid-killing-plants-argument/

Of course, I don't think you're serious; I think you are taking refuge in the plant-killing argument because no other rationalizations are available. That is sad.
What if the problem is not diagnosable from logs?

In a perfect world production and development would be identical, all production issues would be easy to reproduce in development, and logging and error handling would be sufficient to diagnose any problem.

But what do you do when you have a problem that doesn't happen in a perfect world -- that you can't diagnose normally, doesn't occur in dev, shows nothing abnormal in logs, etc.? At some point you need the ability to inspect the actual thing. It's like diagnosing a problem with a bridge by doing experiments on a scale model replica. Doesn't always work.
It's a joke in one of the old Dilbert strips, too. "I hope you don't accidentally DELETE a FILE!"
Like those radio ads which use police sirens in their background to catch your attention.

Or TV ads with Skype/Facebook notification sounds embedded in them for the same reason.
The Art of Hidden Faces: Anthropomorphic Landscapes
I haven't seen any of those yet, but I get the sneaking suspicion that they would all be preaching to the choir.

But I reached my current world view by extensive wearing of foil hats and painstaking calibration of handcrafted bullshit detectors, so it would be nice to see the analyses of those more reputable than my usual sources (by many orders of magnitude), just in case they would ever be useful in an appeal to authority.

For instance, I could tell my spouse something for years, such as "chia seeds are a better source of omega-3s than flaxseed, because the chia seed coat is digestible, whereas the flax seed coat has to be cracked mechanically, which allows the oils inside to become rancid due to oxidation between milling and ingestion." And this is dismissed and forgotten, until Dr. Mehmet Oz features chia seeds on his television show. Afterward, I'm still the only one actually eating the chia seeds, but at least I get less flak for it when I do.

The Cassandra Phenomenon: it's horribly demoralizing.

It's even worse with my homespun political analysis.
Well, the whole thing is kind of academic anyway. I can tell my browser to say "sure, I accept cookies!" and then drop them on the floor.
Boxfuse: Test on VirtualBox, Deploy Atomically to AWS
This could already be the case with closed source firmwares, which could be using unlicensed non-FOSS blobs too for all you know.

If we're ignoring licences now then this is a different argument.
http://www.giantbomb.com/arrival-by-crash-landing/3015-5658/...

Maybe someone should add Factorio
I strongly disagree about TypeScript-- I think it's a huge boon to productivity. TypeScript has has union types i.e. "number | string" which are similar to algebraic data types. TypeScript also has optional interface members and function parameters by putting ? at the end of the name, i.e. "foo?: number".

Static types allow for much, much better tooling, particularly autocomplete and the ability to check whether your code is valid on some basic levels. I consider avoiding it to be a big waste of time. I've had a good experience getting the definitions files going for the libraries I use.

I also disagree with the statement that TypeScript is making JavaScript "like C# or Java". TypeScript lets you opt out of type checking all you want with minimal difficulty. It also will by default always emit JavaScript even if it detects type errors.
Off the top of my head?
Bioshock,
Pikmin,
Halo 4
Exactly — and so you can make the point better simply by saying “cutting corners” directly rather than confusing the issue by using a nationality to imply it.
Wolseley Recall Center 2kW fan heater due to risk of fire hazard
I was like "Welcome X11? You mean there's someone at YC who hasn't boarded the Wayland hypetrain?"
Actually, "antifan" is the right word here. "Don't care/know enough to criticize", and "don't hate enough to be an enemy", but simply think he's overrated.
This Week in Redox OS
Why would you take an untested schematic to a manufacturer and ask them to build a product based off of it? If you are asking the manufacturer to both devise the schematic and build the resulting product, then it behooves you to ask for a prototype built from their schematic in order to evaluate the production's performance.
> It means you can't license the baseband under the GPL, nor release it the public

...within the jurisdiction of the US Government. Have a look at libdvdcss for guidance on how such a baseband might be developed and distributed.
If you watch the video you see that the ad actually answers the warning prompt with "Yes" as well.
Is the information public? Equity investments are visible in SEC filings, but can this even be quantified from public data?
And yet Swift can implement generics with just as much performance as Go. Swift has had limited forms of generics in the first few releases and in the 2.2 developer releases there are full generics; yet they compile to the same performant native executable code that Go does.

In fact, under the hood, Swift uses a similar error handling model to Go, in that multiple values are returned (normal/error). The difference is that in Swift, the syntax and semantics of the language handle that for you instead of requiring the programmer to type in "if err != nil { return nil }" repeatedly.

It's one thing to argue for performance and conciseness in a language, but being dogmatic to the point of refusal to adopt anything that was invented in anything more recent than the 1980s is really going to hinder Go in the long term.
Waze has a prompt that asks if you're a passenger while in motion for precisely this reason.
It depends on the tech worker. Not all tech workers are in those roles. It'd be interesting to see the distribution of all tech salaries. Entry level marketing, support, qa, and sales are all in tech, too.

https://medium.com/@taliajane/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73d...

I wonder how popular Glassdoor is outside of tech. And there's always the uncertainty about how accurate it is.

The calculator says:
"One limitation of the calculator is that the income range that defines each income tier does not vary across regions or cities within the U.S. If you live in a relatively expensive area, such as New York City, it is possible that the calculator places you in a higher income tier than it might if a cost of living adjustment had been made. Conversely, if you live in an inexpensive part of the country, the calculator may place you in a lower income tier than it otherwise might."
When and where was this?
> Everyone plays a role, but nobody wants to give anything up,

I'm just curious, but what could new tech workers give up, exactly?

Entrenched local interests could ease up on building restrictions. That's what they'd give up.

Politicians who make anti-construction policies could stop doing that. That's what they'd give up.

I don't understand what migrants like myself (a programmer who moved here a few years ago to work at a startup) are supposed to give up.
On my very beefy computer, but with a 10 Mbps connection the experience is kind of shitty - it takes around half a second after a "scroll" for the content to appear.
Honestly, the end of the article gets into what's actually necessary to change to fix the housing situation. There's a ton of locally-optimal but globally-detrimental decisions to not build places - so what's necessary is a regional zoning czar for the Bay Area that can tell people to shut the hell up and allow people to build.

Nobody really has the power to do this, and the voters are demanding NIMBY policies, so I'm not holding my breath. The next best strategy is coming up with an acceptable measure of how many people a certain plot of land "should" house and taxing/subsidizing landowners based on how much housing they actually provide on the land. That's technically not an ad-valorem tax, so would dodge Prop 13, while still pricing out people who really should make room for better use of the land.
No need for the abrasive tone, the GP was simply offering constructive criticism. Does that not have a place in your idea of respect? If not, why not?
I find it makes tests much less comprehensible (and gives them worse IDE integration) than JUnit; it uses gratuitous operator overloading style with e.g. "should". And for a beginner it doesn't really offer any advantage - if you're using generators or the like I can see it might be helpful, but for basic unit testing I find straightforward code with JUnit is much easier.
I guess MS wants to concede even more of the high-end desktop market to Apple. Shrug.
A computer I'm reasonably sure isn't alive. But the internet with emergent behaviours, I'm not so sure. But that's a "Ghost in the Shell" style discussion.

> Plants do not possess a nervous system capable of metacognition.

Scientists aren't so sure. And we're only finding out more chemical 'sensors' that allow different sensing of our environment. As for a nervous net, it was thought "No"... But again, more study shows that it's not true.

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-int...

http://www.dw.com/en/when-plants-say-ouch/a-510552-1

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden...

> Killing and eating a plant is not the same thing as killing and eating a mammal, bird, or fish.

That's just moralizing. There is no basis in which to say that X life is better or worse than Y life.
Since the iPhone 6S, Hey Siri is activated by a dedicated chip in the SoC. This enables low-power real-time detection of trigger words. Before, Hey Siri only worked with phones in the process of charging, because it was done with software, so a lot less efficient.

These voice-activated chips can be trained (as seen in a lot of other phones), but I'm not sure the software-powered Siri can be trained.
Simple tech and simple problems are not the same thing. SV has been going after simple (or non existent) problems.
So, two things. First of all: Even if 'killer whale' is more common, I don't think that this kind of name is making a good case for a 'pity the social creatures trapped in a cage' article. I'd try to avoid it, if I wanted to make people more aware of the problems outlined in the article.

But - obviously that's a cultural thing as well. I just checked the English Wikipedia and it happily lists Orcas as 'Killer Whales'. The German Wikipedia [1] however calls them 'Orcas' or 'Sword whales' (Schwertwale, translating word by word here) and explicitly says (my crappy translation, original to go and ask Google Translate about is below [2]) "The animals have been referred to as Killer Whales and Murder Whales by Whalers due to their seeminly brutal ways to hunt for prey".

So maybe it's a bit of both? Bad publicity in general with a name like that and using a name that isn't common and generally ~obsolete~ in my home country?

1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwertwal
2: "Die Namen Killerwal und Mörderwal wurden den Tieren von Walfängern gegeben und nehmen Bezug auf die oft brutal anmutenden Jagdmethoden dieser Raubwale."
Alas Orca has its own connotations, Wikipedia: “Indeed, the genus name Orcinus means "of the kingdom of the dead", or "belonging to Orcus".”
> I can think of some very good reasons to suggest SBT to beginners. Probably the most useful features, in this regard, is that a folder with some Scala files in it is a valid SBT project. You don't even need a build configuration file.

Sounds horribly magic/incomprehensible.

> This is substantially less work than setting up a Scala project through Gradle, Maven, Ant or an IDE.

I don't think the work of doing it in Maven with an IDE could be called substantial. Push the button, choose the scala template, give it a groupId and artifactId, done.
confused robo deputy
I'd like Google to track down highway patrol cops and integrate it with Waze / Maps.
No matter where you'd like to pin the blame for the SF housing crisis, be it zoning, NIMBYism, new money, gentrification, or anything else, there is one thing I think we can be pretty confident about:

The only solution to the problem is for the city to build its way out of it.

There is no rent control regime that will, in the medium term, prevent money from ultimately swamping local concerns. Real estate is a good, not a moral principle, and most people who own real estate have a number.

I would be interested in anyone with a counterexample of a US metro area that withstood sustained market interest, without extensive new building, without skyrocket housing prices and the demographic shifts that come with them.
I think this is also surveilance-wash so to speak. Look at our cool team, look at our wonderful use cases. Don't think about how it can track the movement of everybody in a city from space. We're good.
Obama weighs in on Apple v. FBI: “You can’t take an absolutist view”
I haven't read HPMOR, and I haven't read Harry Potter books, but I watched the movies, and I think HP world is beautiful as is. What makes it unbearable for you?
I worked at a company that started having code reviews. We started off by just "presenting" code to the team. The team would point out any thing that looked like a bug or areas that required extra QA effort. Just knowing you would have to present your code was enough to increase code quality. We didn't worry about style/best practices/subjective feedback at the beginning. Over a few months we all became more comfortable receiving and giving feedback and that's when we started to solidify the style guidelines. Also our ability to catch bugs without QA cycles helped increase buy-in for code reviews.
The dog or mop pictures got me fooled... the others just cute :)
What's up with all the hotel hacking today? First towels [1], now light switches??

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11265849
Lots of jobs in the Irish tech market but they don't pay as well as SV or London
Maybe the architects/builder forget to lay the cable for the switches and wireless lights can then be a cheaper option.
We archive scholarly Reddit AMAs. Here's the responses we've received in 7 mos
A glider gun is still incomprehensibly complex for non-programmers, I fear.

To the extent that resource collection involves stuff happening in Life you will struggle to balance it, and to the extent that it doesn't it's not really life-based at all.
Zoning is a demand-side control residents use to raise rents and housing prices. Tech is a supply-side control residents use.

In other cities and countries, Tech is a proxy for Immigration -- it could be any industry drawing people in. There's other cities in the US, as well as virtually all of them in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, where the twin controls of demand-side zoning and supply-side immigration are used to raise housing costs, both sale prices and rents.

In New Zealand, because the largest city, Auckland, and the smaller ones surrounding it make up over half the country's population, this is seen very clearly because the city government and national government are virtually the same thing. Government representatives speak in a wink wink nudge nudge manner, talking about fast-tracking new housing stock in Auckland and controlling immigration, but making sure house owners know they're not serious so they don't lose votes.

So we should blame both demand-side Zoning and supply-side Tech (i.e. Immigration) for housing crises.
>I’m not a jerk, I just care too much and want other people to care the same amount.

I don't know the real situation, but based on this rationale it sounds like you were being a jerk. You're not even really denying it, just trying to excuse your behavior because it was in service of some higher goal.

That said, acting like a jerk is a behavior, not a permanent attribute. The feedback from your boss should have been about the behaviors you engaged in that negatively impacted the team.
I had a pretty funny story a few months ago. I was watching San Andreas and there is one part where Paul Giamatti (Dr. Lawrence Hayes) yells "ALEXI..." and sure enough Amazon Echo turns on. I had to stop the movie and turn the Echo off because the it subsequently tired to process everything the movie was saying after the trigger word.
I guess when I think of a "dumb" thermostat I think non-electronic. None of the 5 places I've lived in as an adult has had an electronic thermostat.
Banks Online are trying to sound like your best friend
Warn HN: CrashPlan are deleting backups older than 6 months with no notice
I received an email from CrashPlan today informing me they have deleted one of my backups. [0]

They have a retention policy [1] that states backups from PCs that have not connected to the service for 6 months will be deleted. However, this policy has never previously been enforced and is not highlighted during signup or setup. I've been a paying user of CrashPlan for around 8 years and was not aware of this policy. The computer in question was listed as not having been active for nearly 2 years. I have several other backups that have been inactive for up to 5 years. I have not yet received any emails about these other devices, but I can only assume I will be soon.

I received no prior warning or notification that this was going to happen.

I contacted support [2] and they claimed the new enforcement was due to a recent audit of the service.

Although the email I received informed me that the data had already been removed, as of this moment it appears to still be accessible. Support have so far been unable to tell me how long it will remain available for, so I'm in the process of downloading many gigabytes of old backups as fast as I can in the hope some automated process doesn't delete them before I have restored them all.

Not the kind of action I want to see from a service that I need to trust with backups of my data.

[0] - http://pastebin.com/SrJuwgDV

[1] - http://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/4/Subscriptions/Backup_Retention_Policy_For_Inactive_Cloud_Destinations

[2] - http://pastebin.com/ee32yhzB
The line of reasoning, is, IMO:

You have the right to communicate freely -> encryption is just a form of (ostensibly garbled) communication -> you have the right to use encryption freely.

Nothing in that clause says the communication must be understandable or even interpretable by all people.
Animal captivity is a net good - except for the animals. If you believe, as many people do, that all animals should have the same basic rights, then captivity is shameful. In the future, human animals will look back with revulsion at the way we currently treat other animals.
By ignoring the reality of the situation you create a demand for people to cause severe risks to their health for short term problems, preying on the least educated group of people who have a severe information asymmetry... You also crowd out an altruistic source as it no longer becomes a societal issue but rather an economic one.

You also create an unnecessary class problem as middle and upper class people have access to organs, but not poor people who are the actual source of supply...
Why is it so hard to acknowledge that plants:

1. Feel
2. Learn
3. Respond to pain
4. Not respond to pain if under anaesthesia
5. Chemically whimper if they are sick
6. Communicate

... That there might be something deeper? Where is your sense of scientific inquiry that the previously held beliefs are potentially wrong?

Would you want to be able to open up a line of communication if it were indeed possible?
> http://lmgtfy.com/?q=define+democracy

This definition is meaningless. Under this definition, every government is a democracy. People technically voted for Kim Jong Un.

> That our elected officials represent the disparate opinions of the people they serve might be their personal failing, in your view, because you disagree with them on this issue.

No, their personal failing is not thinking for themselves.

> I just don't think that the only reason the encryption conversation continues is because of corrupt political elites. It's not. The conversation continues at the public level too.

I do agree—however, the elected officials are still failing their constituents by not actually understanding what encryption is. They have a responsibility to be educated when their constituents are not.
> It compiles fast

It compiled fast
Malware suspected in Bangladesh bank heist: officials
I wonder why datatau went with the Hacker News format. It's pretty awful
Dell’s Skylake XPS 13, Precision workstations now come with Ubuntu preinstalled
Eclipse Che: Portable Shared Development Workspaces with Built-In Runtimes
If you're looking for historical examples:

Stefan Banach, Israel Gelfand, Edward Witten...
It seems like there's a fine line between having a toddler and having a hostage from the same species. You go to somebody's house, they're like, "Close the door. He'll get out. CLOSE THE DOOR! HE'LL GET OUT!" Okay. What kind of relationship do you have with this kid, exactly?
Everything will be mobile
Animating with React, Redux, and d3
i recently got me a wireless adapter for my xbox one gamepad (to be used on my PC). turns out that I needed a firmware update (!) on said gamepad to be able to use the adapter. wow. of course this wasn't documented, i just figured it's the last thing to try.

that's not the worst though, turns out it is also only possible to update the firmware through an app running exclusively in win10, to be downloaded only through the MS store. so of course I also need a windows live login to use their shite store.

once i started the win10 VM i was seriously flabbergasted about the actual amount of advertisments, news and whatever that was presented to me. i mean it was friggin everywhere. as soon as i typed sth into the startmenu bing(?) results popped up even before local results. wtf. No way I will _ever_ use that piece of crap os. hopefully valve gets their steam os running soon.
btw, at least the controller works as intended now.
Hopfield was the first to poke at Ising model spin to create memory-having systems, creating his Hopfield model where memory states are represented as attractors in the Hamiltonian search space. Add hidden units to that, and you get the general Boltzmann machine. Restrict the connections, you get a restricted Boltzmann machine. Layer them up, you get the 2006 Hinton and Salakhutdinov advance in deep learning.
Lol. I just imagined a hilarious but possibly effective use case.

Imagine this happening in movie theaters during trailers.

"Hey Siri, turn off"
Its not about performance, its about keeping the language simple. As someone who writes in Go, I really find this an attractive feature. I learned it in a few days, which is pretty fantastic IMO. Although I'm not sold on the Go shouldn't have generics argument, it does seem like Go has more pressing issues than implementing generics tho. Like bring the compile time back down to near instant instead of 300ms. lol

Also Swift's compiled code does not get near the same performance as Go's compiled code. Even when you unsafely compile Swift's code, it doesn't get near. When you start embedding C function calls into Swift and turning off Swift's safety features then it has been shown to get near Go.