skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Say I'm right 70% of the time, then I can equal weight my bets and it will be just swell. But say I'm right about 51% of the time. Then it's going to take quite a while longer for the law of large numbers to work in my favour.

That's actually very far from being true.
If you trade a single instrument, sure, the variance will kill you in anything but the very long run. But if you trade thousands of securities (like say, the entire US equity market), then a 55% prediction ratio and a market neutral strategy will absolutely crush. Even if you blindly buy/sell on every signal without doing any sort of weighing (excluding low confidence predictions, etc), then you should see a several sigma strategy.

It only takes a very, very small edge to make a very low risk strategy if you can diversify.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_averaging

Now add on top of that the fact they will have several low SNR prediction signals, and the effects of signal averaging become even greater

I'm also a "quant fund insider", as you put it...
> I've been on HN for many years and my recollection is that the community here has been very supportive and encouraging of India's efforts in space technology.

Unless your memory is selective - you may recall that the support was far from unanimous. I recall a number of HNers stating that the ISRO budget would be better spent on other 'more pressing' challenges India is facing (poverty, sanitation). In fairness, there was a lot of push-back against the naysayers, stating why the space program is money well spent (the most prominent benefits I recall were improved weather predictions benefit farming and cheaper/better telecoms)

--edit: added stuff below this line--

The naysayers have made an appearance in this very thread. They are currently being downvoted (I expect nothing less from HN).
Plenty of kids appear to have survived horrific orphanage experiences, growing up abused, and a complete lack of love. I'm yet to hear of one that made it without food.
Hey, remember when The Lower Merion Township School remotely enabled students' laptop webcams to capture students in various stages of undress at home?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/19/schools-spied-...

Yeah sorry Eric is wrong on this one.
Engineering Changes to ClearType in Windows 7 (2009)
They can convincea judge to do that anyway, if it was a lawful request.
What's the science of human-relationships called? (not exactly anthropology..)

Whatever it is, it feels like it's gotten much less attention than it deserves, going by the affect it can have on our lives.

Great article.
Not sure for all the downvotes, it's a legitimate point.
We don't have to choose between making inherently safe AIs and creating and environment safe from hostile AIs. We should do both. Apart from anything else, we already have a planet full of intelligent agents, many of which are highly hostile, so increasing our general level of security should already be a high priority.
the more successful sciences deal with acausal quantitative relationships between different variables

Ironically, you're confusing cause and effect (or rather, observation and result) in how scientific progress is made: the observation of correlation leads to the formulation of cause (i.e. theory), and the manipulation of specific variables leads to the validation of effect (i.e. proof). Without either, fields of science do not mature at all.

Now here's the million dollar question: when it comes to complex models (like genetics, neurology or the climate), how do you isolate and manipulate specific variables to validate their effect?
Yes, it does matter. Following the machine without understanding what's going on is how you make mistakes.
Simples, market it as 1946 honey, no carbon dating after that! 70 year old honey coming at you
LL(n) can be limiting indeed. But you can easily mix, say, PEG and Pratt. Because where else do you need LR-like parsing but in the binary expressions, the C-style dot syntax and so on.
By late 90s, eternal september had set in. Meaning that anyone with AOL access could access usenet. the net has likely never recovered.
If you enable camera for a fraction of second nobody would notice the change of indicator.
Royal HaskoningDHV Delivers 'smart' Amsterdam Central Station
"It seems to me that overarching theories of a Platonic bent miss the embodied-ness, Dasein-ness of human activity."

What a spectacularly obtuse and improbable sentence! Its mere existence underlines its point. Nice.
Yes, Taleb did the actual calculation in one of his books. I'm exaggerating because if I say it's 50.01% it will cause head scratching.
I flag (using my non-throaway account) any article that only results in mob-and-pitchfork style discussion. Many comments in here are advocating that we should abandon the court and justice system (because its unfair to the victim, its too high requirements for conviction, ectra) in favor of just punishing the assumed guilty. I will keep flagging stories like this as long as that opinion still runs popular.
It's low tech but, fold a piece of black card into a ∧ and balance it on the top of the screen.
Some thoughts on the business model:

* traditional hedge funds have a problem with scaling: if you put more money in the same strategy returns go down. Numerai hopes to scale the number of strategies it employs by scaling the number of researchers participating.

* by providing researchers only opaque streams of data, they prevent researchers from leaving and competing directly. If you don't know how the data corresponds to the market, you can't replicate the trading at another fund. (Some big hedge funds like D.E.Shaw do the same!)

* researchers may still leave and compete indirectly, using the same algorithms on different market features. But by paying anonymously in bitcoin, Numerai may be hoping for the reverse, that programmers from other quant funds will anonymously moonlight for Numerai using their algorithms from those other funds.

* by being opaque with the data, Numerai keeps researchers from knowing the true value their strategies are providing. That information asymmetry is in Numerai's favor, letting them underpay even strong performers.
1) if people get script money, which they spend on energy, they effectively get to use the utility as a battery - at a cost for the utility.

2) The utility can't (and honestly, shouldn't) directly shoulder that cost, so they pass it on to other clients.

3) net-metering cap serves as a limit to prevent the utility from being unsustainable, because the rooftop energy business can't survive without it.

What SolarCity effectively wants is to move the cap so that they get more parts of a pie which they are stucturally forced to share with the utility. Effectively, we're witnessing the woes of a growth-hacking model in an environment where the main source of margin and growth is regulatory decision.
You can have the hardware display for a minimum of 3 seconds.
Couple of things, there are just more and more devices that have high frequency electronics. So increasingly we're surrounded by a sea of radiators.

A problem with all transmitters is they produce out of band signals. Mostly harmonics, but also lesser amounts of other frequencies. And another issue is that receivers only have limited ability to reject out of band signals. A strong out of band signal will reduce your receivers sensitivity. (Difficulty, out of band rejection comes at the expense of ultimate sensitivity, pick your poison)

The problem then is that the amount of energy needed to raise the noise floor is tiny, minuscule. And we have all these devices that all add a tiny amount each, which then adds up to something. If you raise the noise floor a few db it matters a lot, because following reason.

Consider this, if you double the distance from the transmitter, the signal strength drops by ~6db. So if interference reduces your receivers sensitivity from -120db to -114db it cuts the effective range in _half_[1].

[1] It's not quite half because in the real world you have air, trees, and buildings in the way which means your signal drops off faster than the inverse square. Instead the exponent is more like 2.5(outside) to 3.5(inside)
Dotty: a next generation compiler for Scala
> Having Emacs control indentation with the TAB key drives me insane too, I'd just like to control it myself.

Thats what the space key is for. Also emacs controlling tabs is the liberating genius of python dev in emacs.
It is this that is a huge part of how I react negatively to the recent issue where Facebook has suddenly decided to push heavily on me to install a Facebook Messenger Android app on my phone.

You know: the functionality that already worked, that was already a cleanly solved problem in their mobile web app. But yet with a native Android app the store says they "need" to access my camera, my microphone, my GPS, all my contacts, all my photos, videos, my file system, my phone, my wifi interface, etc etc. Because... you know. Just trust us. In order for me to type in a short ASCII text message and hit ENTER and have that delivered to another person. A problem solved with much less code, and much less permissions, both in SMS, email, Usenet, etc, for the prior 30+ years.

I glance over to Shirer's Rise & Fall on my bookshelf, for a second or two, before falling asleep tonight.

"Trust us." - 1932 Germany/Europe is calling
People are under the impression that not being Turing complete is somehow enough to be feasibly verifiable. If we place (realizable) computational models on a scale, with 0 being no computation at all, and 10 being Turing completeness, then the computational models we can generally verify are somewhere between 0 and 1 (with 1 being, say, FSMs). A language with no loops, no recursion and just subroutines and binary variables -- i.e. it's an FSM -- is already PSPACE-complete to verify, meaning we can only verify only very short programs in that language. In other words, you need to get very far from Turing completeness to be generally verifiable.

This is why in general software verification doesn't try to come up with languages where all programs are verifiable, but aims to verify specific programs, sometimes regardless of the computational strength. Some programs in Turing complete languages can be verified (but certainly not all), just as some programs in FSM-strength languages can be verified (but certainly not all).

While it is certainly possible that a much bigger subset of, say, FSM programs can be verified than a subset of programs in TC languages, placing the bar at "Turing complete" is somewhat of a red herring.

Indeed, the LANGSEC link in the post[1] seems to understand that, noting that even verifying PDAs is undecidable, but it fails to note that even decidable verification tasks (for FSMs) are very often intractable, which -- for all practical purposes -- is just as bad as being undecidable.

[1]: http://langsec.org/occupy/
Sensors bring about queue measurement and resource benefits at Keflavik Airport
I think any cultural bias takes more than a generation to go away. As hard as anyone tries to make a conscious effort, millenials have been brought up by people who were still to some degree perpetuating ancient prejudice against given groups of people, which did impact them as a child in pernicious ways.

The key I think is to try to recognize one's biases and work towards keeping them in check, while working proactively to smooth the social rapport with all other human beings, so that newer generations will in turn be less impacted by said sexism, racism, etc.
Apple's very first camera accessory, the iSight camera, had a physical iris that you could open and close for privacy:

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5...

I thought that was beautiful UI, since you knew that the lens was being blocked; you didn't have to trust that the software/firmware was doing the right thing.
Singapore Releases New Regulations for Securities Crowdfunding Platforms
IMO, OOP sounds nice but frankly we humans work in procedural ways.

Everything from farming on up can be described as "first we do X then we do Y".
>Being a team player can be super hard, especially when everything is phrased in terms of 'your way or my way'. It eats up a huge amount of energy that could be used more productively and it tends to make it hard to leave the job without taking it home every day.

The hardest person I had to work with was someone who was super picky about using the right words for all social situations. If you referred to something as "your way" They would make a rather large deal of it. Most of the time, I was just trying to identify one of the two choices.

I mean, uh, the person in question was certainly worth working with, in spite of their social issues, and certainly, learning less confrontational language, you know, language less likely to set off other people is a worthwhile goal, but my point is just that if you spend too much time concentrating on the connotations of the words, rather than on the denotations, well, you can become pretty difficult to deal with for anyone who isn't used to walking on your particular brand of eggshells. Yeah, if you are good enough, we'll deal with it, but don't pretend that making a big deal out of connotations rather than denotations makes you easier to work with. It's quite the opposite.

I mean, I totally agree that minimizing ego should be a goal... but I also think it's disingenuous to pretend we don't have ego at all. We all have ego. It sucks. but it is. lying about it won't help. Acknowledging it and trying to move past it might.
The tiny amount of lead involved is very unlikely to be harmful. You could probably safely eat the amount of solder used to assemble that board.

I do think think a case is necessary though, as those SOIC packages will not last long in pocket with keys before they are ripped off the PCB.
Most families in SF either have been there for decades or do in fact make 150k/yr. It's not being rich - it's just the local standard. This is the mark of a successful city (even though in the process culturally a lot was lost unfortunately) There is a small section of the city that has crime. That pretty much goes for any large city - and it's tied very closely to the city's efforts to help disadvantaged people.

If SF really wanted to get rid of the homeless and crime they definitely could with some NIMBYism. They'd shut down all the low income housing and stop helping the disadvantaged and increase arrests.

Context: grew up in SF. don't live there anymore.. but i don't recent the changes to the city. Life moves on
Well they can verify butter that is thousands of years old http://www.sltrib.com/home/4004975-155/man-finds-22-pound-ch... Now of course the butter is only preserved because the bogs keep it cool enough yet it apparently is still edible

I can verify it keeps ten plus years and works just fine having bought two two quart containers of sage honey that long ago and having about a fourth of one container left. Sage doesn't even crystallize but for those that do I think a little heat fixes it
Would that make C functions OO?
This is exactly my story as well. Even in HS, if I studied for an exam it would be a couple of hours the night before. Not so many A's maybe but plenty of B's and C's got me through just fine. Then it was quite a shock when I got to college/uni and learned the hard way that in many cases it took weeks of studying for an exam. Now in retrospect I'm quite proud of myself that I didn't give up. There were certainly times when I felt like doing just that.
I'd be very skeptical about that claim without substantial evidence of it surviving in the field. Especially if you use ROHS solder, which is more brittle than leaded solder.

There is an ESD diode in the design but it only protects certain pathways -- a zap could come from anywhere if the thing is bare.
Modern SMD microcontrollers tend to have pretty fine pin pitches, often in the 1mm ballpark. You really want a proper PCB for those.
As far as I am aware Ubuntu complies with all trademark requirements for upstream software that it packages (e.g. Firefox, and probably other 3rd party pre compiled software). For most F/OSS software they have no trademark requirements and/or registered trademarks. So in effect Ubuntu are doing the right thing (tm).
"You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide" -

Most commonly attributed to Joseph Goebbels in 1933.
I did this for a long time but stopped because I thought it looked too tin-foil-hat-like. After seeing Zuck do it, I think I'm going back.

But why the audio jack. I don't own a Mac. Do I understand correctly that he taped over a 3.5mm analog audio jack?
FWIW, I've had better mileage out of `dtrt-indent` by increasing the `dtrt-indent-min-quality` option to `90.0`, which has the heuristics a tad more strict in choosing the correct indentation. However, there are still cases where the wrong choice is made and fixing is extremely annoying.

I've been using Spacemacs for about 3 months now, moving from Sublime Text, and while the initial experience was mixed, there are things that I just couldn't do without (project management felt weird at first, but now feels seamless, the fact you can edit over SSH transparently etc).

There are still many pain points, such as the sub-standard multiple cursor implementation (with `evil-mc`, `iedit` isn't much better) or the fragmented and incomplete tagging implementation (GNU Global doesn't support everything and generating isn't transparent, though `dumb-jump` is being implemented which may help).

However, I feel that both Emacs and Spacemacs have very strong foundations and extremely vibrant communities, and am confident a lot of the pain points (at least the ones that aren't architecture-related) will be fixed given enough time. Spacemacs is well on its way for a new major release, which should fix a few things.
> Oracle may be fast, but it's also expensive.

So? That's capitalism: one gets what one pays for, and Oracle is not just fast, it can do a lot, and it can be configured to be paranoid about protecting data, and it has clustering technology meant for scaling, RAC.

Truth be told they could have picked PostreSQL and it would have still been a better solution than Cassandra and MySQL.
A better front end experience
It seems like they're basically lying to people about their own legal powers and the person's legal obligations. Don't you find that troubling?
wow, that's an awful UI. Reminds me of the gloomy days of 9gag, circa 2010.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. Could you provide some references? Chomsky was extremely critical of "the Bell Curve", if that's what you're referring to. (http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-6/chomsky-...)
I think you need to factor in the costs incurred by building and maintaining high voltage power transmission lines. These have to be payed for by users of the power grid. If you go off grid, then you not only reduce transmission losses, you also eliminate costs for use of the power distribution infrastructure.
This is a valid point, and does not deserve a down vote.
The term "stamp" in this context is used to refer to a system of payment using a proof-of-purchase (the stamp). Another example, a postage stamp is evidence that you have paid for the delivery of your letter. Some countries use stamps to pay for government services like deeds or passports.

You are confusing this with a ration system using stamps, which allows the purchase of a good, but does not actually pay for the goods.
It's just a base + a hardener, mix and cast. Make sure you protect switches and connectors before casting. The reaction is exothermal, if you cast larger volumes you may need to cool the whole thing to avoid trouble (such as fire).
How to avoid that working remotely will ruin your productivity
AFAIR here in Germany you pay about .05 €/kwH power transmission fees that go to the owner of the transmission infrastructure (i.e. "the grid"). I wonder how much people in the US pay. You get what you pay for :)
Fair use doesn't even enter the question. How do you know the customer didn't own the copyright on his files, and was well within his rights to share the files with anyone of his choosing?
If you want to compare the events in the article with gang-rape, lets just change the defamation laws so that talking about ones sex life without permission by the other person who was there (first linked story in article) will give you the same amount of years in prison as gang rape.

I am pretty sure that if that happened, people would watch what they said much more.
I remember reading a book about Judaism (can't recall which) that strongly hinted at the fact that kosher came out of reflection about whether or not killing an animal was 'good'. In their theory, the 'soul' of the animal was in the blood, by drawing the blood you did your best to spare the 'godly' and 'loved' (my words) part before benefiting from taking the life of a being by eating his flesh. Found that pretty interesting, a rare time where I can relate with feeling and reason behind religious rituals. That said, I was eager to share that with a jewish friend who told me that this was bs, and that you eat kosher because you have to eat kosher. Weird.
Even that wouldn't be enough. And for some environments (e.g. living room) you would need super bright indicator accompanied by sound.
>>> I’m currently looking for work in the U.S. government.

A crypto work in the goverment not related with surveilance - directly or not- seems difficult to find.

Or am I missing something ?
it always increases my productivity :)
> I have more people wanting to buy my honey than I can supply

Isn't that a question of price?
What they are doing is the equivalent of demanding that people help with the investigation and threatening them with legal consequences if they don't.

The fact is that even if a police officer doesn't have the right to arrest you for refusing to comply, they can absolutely threaten to do so and as a matter of fact if they choose to cuff and detain you that is what will happen regardless of your legal rights regarding any information you might have.
Is there anything that isn't "observed"? Are you suggesting that everything except formal logic (or perhaps including?) cannot be objectively characterized? Have we been awarding the Nobel prize in Chemistry to too many chemists, while failing to recognize the emotional-social validity of alchemy?
> In May, Gregory Selden, a black Airbnb user, turned to Twitter to share his experience of being turned down by a Philadelphia host. He posted that he then “made a fake profile as a white guy and was accepted immediately.” He has since filed a lawsuit against Airbnb, saying that it violated his civil rights.

Having access to somebody else's private home is a civil right now? I get that the host is a terrible person, and if airbnb wants to write a rule saying "only non-discriminatory hosts can use our service" that'd be cool, but making discrimination on a personal level illegal seems pretty dangerous (Would somebody also get sued for swiping left on all black people on Tinder?)
[Private BETA]For those of you who are following international publishers
Not really. Just label it as "Vintage Honey", write "Experience the taste of honey taken from Egyptian tombs" and add in very tiny letters at the bottom "From 2016 harvest". As long as you don't claim it's actually taken from an Egyptian tomb, you can just spin it however you like. If you want to be somewhat more honest, make sure the bees only drink nectar from flowers that would have been grown during the time of the pharaohs.
India is third-world in both senses of the term: neutral during the Cold War and economically still developing.