skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>It makes me a bit sad that the political zeitgeist in the tech community is leaning towards "acceptable losses" when it comes to accidents in automated cars

What. "Acceptable losses" is, and has always been the rule when it comes to accidents in all cars, ever. We've made absolutely massive safety improvements in the last few decades, cutting the death rate to around 1/3 of its historical maximum, yet even so tens of thousands of people will die in America alone this year (probably in the neighborhood of ~30k). And next year. And the year after. According to the World Health Organization, there were 1.25 million road traffic deaths in 2013, and if anything I'd expect that to have continued to rise as more and more people worldwide gain access to vehicles.

Yet we will absolutely continue to support car use, because flexible mechanized point-to-point personal transportation is insanely valuable to us (and in fact American society at least simply could not function without it at all at this point). You can dress it up however you like, but the objective fact of the matter is that literally millions of deaths are considered "acceptable losses" here.

Full automation represents our absolutely best shot to reduce the horrendous, annual loss of human life. So personally, I find your appeal to emotion and thinly veiled "what about the children" shtick disgusting and immoral. You've invented imaginary "rights" that absolutely do not and should not exist. Your so called

>"blind push forward at the expense of human lives"

is literally the opposite of what automation aims to accomplish. And I will freely assert will accomplish, because humans are awful drivers. Really, automation is merely filling in the missing piece of personalized transport that we should have had from the start, except that our mechanical technological development was far ahead of our information gathering and processing technological development. Having a human handling that has always been a hack, and getting rid of it has such vast positives that it absolutely justifies a very strong push forward as soon as possible. Every year without driverless vehicles when we could have had them is literally hundreds of thousands more people dead.

This tech does not exist in a vacuum, and context absolutely matters.
Unpopular music service to acquire even less popular music service. With those forces combined they will be unstoppable! /s
As a pre-autopilot S owner, I've been skeptical of autopilot since the day it was announced. I think folks put too much trust in it, and edge cases, as anyone who's developed software/hardware knows are the gremlins that are almost impossible to completely account for. Edge cases are the things that have kept me from being excited about autopilot. Even 99.99999% reliability means eventually you run into an edge case. Simple math.

I also think that Tesla does not do anywhere near enough to educate brand-new owners, especially the non-techie later-adopter owners that are starting to buy Teslas in droves. They're turned loose with these cars and there are enough weirdnesses with the usability and user experience of driving and operating the car that it catches up on people. Add to that the cognitive distractions of 21st century life (esp mobile devices) and you have the makings of new kinds of "normal accidents."

I suspect that some time soon it will be a requirement that either DMVs issue new rules for having a license to operate a vehicle with autonomous capability, or, they'll require the manufacturer to certify that the buyer has gone through a certified course of instruction and training offered by the manufacturer or its designate.

It may well be that in this case, the victim, who was clearly a Tesla enthusiast and knew a lot about autopilot, may have passed any such testing by DMV or manufacturer with flying colors. Not the point. In general, as Tesla and other manufacturers make autonomy more mainstream, we're going to see these edge case situations more frequently.

Me, I view autopilot as a dangerous feature that I would never, ever trust. As a set of incredible SENSORS that help me with second-by-second situational awareness while driving, fine. As a replacement for my driving, hell no.
Suicide Rate by Occupational Group (US)
"The jet stream in the Northern Hemisphere has crossed the equator and joined up with the jet stream in the Southern Hemisphere. This seems like new behaviour, and indicates that climate system mayhem is ongoing."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKasUm77D0U
Zenefits CEO discloses plan to stop potential investor lawsuits
Interesting we saw about a 50% performance hit when trying jruby and also a 15% hit on memory usage- it was a no go for us
This appears to be an implementation of Reed-solomon error correction code... at the assembly level. (!! handwritten assembly? I don't see that too often nowadays)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%E2%80%93Solomon_error_cor...

Which is basically the mathematics behind RAID-5, RAID-6, and even hard-drive / SSD sector-level error correction. Parchive is an older open-source project that implements the same concept:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchive
This shows laws against PDAs, not private "promiscuity" whatever that is
> My hand being on the wheel at all times is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for verifying that I am paying attention and am ready to take over control.

Then you are not using the feature the way Tesla says you should, the only way Tesla says it's safe to be used.

> I am sick and tired of absolutist statements about risk.

Recklessly rolling out tech is screwing the industry-at-large, given the regulatory hurdles that must be overcome.

>> One death is too many.

You took this out of context. When Tesla makes no genuine, up-front attempt to educate users on how to use Auto-Pilot--yes, one death is too many.

Correctly-deployed autonomous driving stands to save thousands of lives annually; what's at risk is some overeager company @#!$ing the regulatory efforts by being irresponsible at scale.
Performance wise, I wouldn't put Java next to ruby and python, in what workload would the erlang vm beat the jvm?
While I loved Serial, and think that it is great that he's getting a retrial, this whole case (and especially the retrial) concerns me. Adnan's family apparently had some money that they could devote to getting more attention for him (and that's fantastic), which helped a lot in getting attention for his case.

But this raises the fact that someone without any means to speak of is basically screwed. Hearing interviews with people who work with the Innocence Project, sometimes the case against convicted felons is shockingly flimsy. Yet, it takes years and a lot of money to get them overturned.
I think it's a bit ridiculous that the Tesla feature is called an autopilot when it only covers a subset of circumstances a human could handle. I don't see how a human being would not apply brakes when they see a truck perpendicular across a highway ... it can't be missed. The guy was not paying attention simply because the Tesla smoothly handles 95% of circumstances ... something in the other 5% occurred and he relied on the machine because of the smooth previous experience ... and died.

The robot led him to believe it was more competent than it really was.
Apple 2 – Workbook [1977] [pdf]
Cool. I requested this feature a few years ago.
Because "Just do it!"
I'll let someone else field that because I'm not knowledgeable enough to say one way or the other. The inter-document JOINs were one of the features that first drew me in so all I can say is it doesn't match my usage.
Philip Greenspun's impressions after trying out the Model X for a weekend:

"You need to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times during autosteering, yet not crank the wheel hard enough to generate what the car thinks is an actual steering input (thereby disconnecting autosteer). I found this to be about the same amount of effort as simply driving."

I thought that was an interesting observation.

http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2016/06/27/smug-rich-bastard-...
Dun and Bradstreet offering free credit reports to businesses affected by Brexit
Step 2: Have parents to pay for that school, that you quit a large company to go to. Granted, he got into stanford fine. He went to high school in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Michigan. Easy to take risks if you already have little to worry about.
It also seems strange that the rest of the tractor trailer was not picked up by the radar when it was entering the road in the first place - the front part that is pulling the trailer is typically lower and should not have been mistaken for a road sign or otherwise.
So, reading this made me finally realise what I don't like about autonomous cars.

tl;dr: stupid bugs can now kill you dead.

You know how AI systems, when they fail, they really, really fail? Like, when you ask Google Image Search for "unprofessional hair" and it returns images of black womens' hair because it doesn't have a clue? Or when you ask Google Translate to translate "swallows" to Greek and it comes back with the Greek work for "swallowing" (true story) because it has no idea what either word means, just that they're somehow similar, ish?

That sort of thing. When AI fails, it fails in ways that nothing with a brain will ever deign to fail. People don't crash into the sides of barns because they mistook them for the open sky. People don't run over old ladies because they thought they were flowerbeds.

Human drivers fail in situations where they don't have time to react- but even given all the time in the world there are situations where a program will simply derp, and derp and derp again until the end of time. And if this happens in the middle of a life or death situation, people die. The same happens with autopilots on planes.

So this is what, well, bugs me. I don't guess I get to choose how I die (unless I do it myself) but I'm pretty sure I don't want to die because of a dumb bug in a stupid machine. Therefore, I don't want no cars being "smart" around me. I don't want to be the one driving them and I don't want others driving them around me.

The current tech simply can't avoid completely brain-dead mistakes and no road vehicle should be given autonomy until that changes.
I think the age varies. But you'd be hard pressed to find someone who could recall pre-toddler. My earliest are at 2-5, for reference. (placed by location, but there are probably some earlier in that range)
I remember when Gruber was telling us that Apple was not buying Beats for the streaming service and its associated contracts. The truth is Apple acquired Beats almost solely for this asset.

This move makes totally sense if you consider that Apple is trying to control the streaming market the same way it controlled the download to own one. I'm sure the labels will do whatever they can to avoid it.

Spotify is a (big) thorn in Hook's foot and Ek would die rather than sell Spotify.

That also explains why Apple is not releasing the 30% tax for music streaming and why Spotify released an app with its own payment system to grab attention. It's war.
Uncertainty Rocks Chip Market
> Professor Hawking said: “Six years ago, I was warning about pollution and overcrowding, they have gotten worse since then. The population has grown by half a billion since our last interview, with no end in sight.

When will the overpopulation argument die? It was wrong when the world was significantly less populated and poorer, and it's probably wrong now.

Wealth and prosperity are not natural resources that are harvested from nature. They are the results of human intellect and ingenuity.
Isn't Apple Music already the #2 most popular streaming music service behind Spotify? I'd hardly call 15 million paid subscribers unpopular.
Since I have not seen any of these, can you actually point to large media outlets saying these things?
It can if you can show you were coerced, but most likely not.
I'm surprised at the variability of pricing by different vendors in this space. I would have imagined they would all be competing on breadth of API rather than price.

An SMS to a number on a particular network provider should cost pretty much the same for all Messaging Platform Providers originating from the same countries.
Wasn't a massive layoff in the Nike Fitness Tracker department during the "Secret"-era? Or is this for plain mobile apps that have nothing to do with the fitness trackers?
How many of those 15 million are people who forgot to turn off auto-renew on their free trial?
Snowden sharply criticizes anti-terrorism laws adopted by the State Duma
I'm not so sure that the driver being 100% responsible is ridiculous with this particular iteration of technology. I have not experienced the Telsa system. However, IF the following from the blog post is true:

>...Additionally, every time that Autopilot is engaged, the car reminds the driver to “Always keep your hands on the wheel. Be prepared to take over at any time.” The system also makes frequent checks to ensure that the driver's hands remain on the wheel and provides visual and audible alerts if hands-on is not detected. It then gradually slows down the car until hands-on is detected again.

THEN, this seems a design that both envisions and forces a driver to keep their hands on the wheel and stay focused. This does not seem to be a design that directs, encourages, or allows a driver to engage the system then take a nap.

At some point in the future, with fully autonomous driving, yes, there must be some legal framework wherein the car manufacturer is responsible. This piece of technology does not seem to fall within that framework.
I'm talking more about concurrency and distribution models, not raw performance.
> high quality audio (...) once they bring out the iPhone with lightning headphones

... and you've lost me. I mean, the 3.5 mm jack solution is used by audiophiles for connecting headphones costing several iPhones to equipment costing dozens of iPhones. If it was in any way a problem for audio fidelity, these people would've gone for a new solution long ago.
I'm familiar with what a C64 is, but I have never seen one in my life. The majority of my fellow undergrad students know next to nothing about the history of computing. But in reality, that's just fine. If our goals are to become functioning software engineers, all that really matters is what's in use now. Provided, a little historical context can help us make some better decisions, but you don't see people coding in ed just so they appreciate their IDE.
Sprint & T-Mobile both aggressively compete on price.
A reply to that tweet:

"our new Prius applied the brakes while driving under an overpass. I'm glad no one was following too close"
I read it more closely and they do try to enforce that a driver has his hands on the wheel, etc. I am not convinced of the benefits though. I think something that enforces people to pay attention when driving is a better solution.
All that matters is, did the technology fail. I don't care about crash rates in other cars, if the impact had been different, the only fact that matters in this case is, did the tech fail. If so then is it safe to leave on or should it be disabled across the board until it cannot fail this scenario again.

one failure and they will take a minor publicity and money hit, two and its going to devastating
Tesla owner dies in the first fatal crash involving a self-driving car
I didn't say it was a problem but one of the theories for why they would make this change is audio quality. I believe it would allow you to build pre-amps and things into headphones.
Scientists Are Redefining the Kilogram
In one year they've managed to acquire half the number of paid subscribers Spotify has - and with a pretty buggy product. That's pretty impressive.
A million times this answer. We're in need of a good dose of that in engineering organizations.
It was promoted via HN (though it didn't really get many upvotes), Reddit, our forums, and our Twitter account.
Before I moved away recently, I had dinner pretty regularly with the guys at Dismas House Nashville (dismas.org), which provides transitional housing for former offenders. They do a great job helping people get back on their feet with housing, jobs, etc. I don't know if they can help directly, but if Ray has roots in North Carolina perhaps the staff there (I've worked with Davey and Scott) know people in the southeast region who could help.
Change.org adds fundraising to their empowerment platform
If that is true that is entirely unintentional and Im sorry. There is a lot going on all at once for us right now.

I'm willing to clarify to avoid further to confusion if you can provide more detail.
If you look at their jobs page, there seems to have been a surge of Android development positions that I did not see there before. So it seems like they may be ramping up on the Android side of things now.
>> I remember when Gruber was telling us that Apple was not buying Beats for the streaming service and its associated contracts.

He really said that? I thought everyone at the time was pretty much agreed they were buying it for the streaming service, not the headphones.

>> "That also explains why Apple is not approving the last Spotify app update. It's war."

They're not approving it because supposedly Spotify built in their own payment system which is a clear violation of App Store guidelines. Could be wrong but that's what I read.
"That said, it did bother me how he apparently never thought to call on her during the time of her disappearance, even though they were no longer a couple. That was probably one of the strongest pieces of circumstantial evidence against him, in my eyes."

I don't know about you, but like most people, I'm not on speaking terms with most of my ex-es.
A MIST-y Amiga
I'm glad archive.org saved some of taco's hot fire. Here's my favorite worst

http://web.archive.org/web/20040807015518/http://www.jamhand...
Sean has been doing fantastic, underappreciated work for a long time. Agree here.
I really don't understand why they wouldn't just implement ACME first if they really do plan on getting around to it. What benefit do they really have of trying to go out on their own on this?
Zenefits Slashes Own Valuation in Half to Appease Investors
It's a bit weird to me that US suicide data is so sparse, when suicide is such a significant cause of mortality.

This study includes data from: Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

I suspect you'd have pretty much the same result if you also included California as well.

Suicide is complex, and we shouldn't suggest simple causes, but we know that economic difficulties are one driver of increased suicide. Those occupations at the top of the list are all sensitive to wider economic downturn, so that might be why they see higher rates of death by suicide.
>> The point is that humanity is not a herd to be taken as a whole;

That's a great point but the truth is that we already treat human lives as a resource to be spent: for instance, we allow planes to fly and automobiles to be driven even though their safety is not perfect. We allow that, out of say a million flights, one plane will fatally crash killing usually everybody on board (I don't know what the real number is- I made the 1/1mil up).

So basically we accept that in order for each of us to fly to our destination, 300 ish people must die every so often. Like a kind of sacrifice.

I don't see how any of this is going to stop any time soon, especially when people are always quick to tell you how safe flying is, or how, although road accidents are common and people get killed in them, "what can you do, stop driving?". It seems to me that at some level we all accept that in order for us to have our fast transport, some people must die.
Chroma Doze (source also on github).

Tell yourself it will be over soon.

If it's same time each day, create a routine to be out (cafe, library browse, exercise) - he can help you reach your goals!

I have had success in talking to the person, but only by caring about them, as a person, first.

You can move, but noise seem to follow me around - construction noise, air conditioning hum, people running/jumping upstairs - to a greater or lesser extent.

Lower density housing (eg rural or wilderness) helps but talk and music in a noisy cafe doesn't bother me, but furtive conversation in a quiet library does...

It's funny, when I'm enthralled by projects and life, I don't notice these annoyances... I think it can be a sign that I've lost touch with myself or am blocked in some way.
My apologies, but that's what's been explained. Something to the effect of "it's best that people document/annotate their types, so we require it."

Your description of contracts in Rust vs other languages isn't reflective of how they can be used. With global inference, nothing prevents a programmer from deciding where the major boundaries of his program are and annotating where desired. This not only provides the benefits of both worlds, but allows the author to decide where the contract and documentation goes.

Nothing is gained by requiring the programmer to annotate every little helper function, nested or otherwise. And for people just playing around, it brings a significant barrier. They must not only sort of grasp how the borrow system works, they must be able to write a flawless annotation to boot.

At worst, lack of annotations should be a warning (the warning can include the inferred type!), like the casing/naming style ones. Perhaps with an option for public/exported functions only.

(Sorry if my tone comes off hostile; not my intention.)
Audiophilia has nothing to do with actual sound quality.
No I'm not. I'm saying that we know something about how the universe works. And one of the things we know is that there is no free momentum or energy (in flat space time).

The reason that we know this is far stronger than simply: "It hasn't been observed yet". That would allow that any new thing could end up violating the established rules.

It could be that if you write the one hundred millionth Mersenne prime on a cookie, and the one two hundred millionth on a banana they start circling each other and create free energy. This claim has not been falsified. So on what grounds do we rule it out? Because it is incompatible at an incredibly deep level with everything we know about cookies, bananas, and how their physical properties depend on what's written on them.

Every aspect of each of these objects that has ever been observed has been found to be describable in terms of some unbelievably simple mathematical structures. For these unbelievably simple mathematical structures we have prove that anything that can be described by them does not allow free energy.

An observation like the Mersenne, cookie, banana interaction can not violate the mathematical derivation, therefore it implies that out of all the infinitude of observations that have been made of bananas and cookies, that all were describable by energy and momentum conserving physical theories, somehow this one arbitrary one is special. It can not be described by even the type of mathematics we have hitherto used and yet was completely invisible.

How could that be? Flying Spaghetti Monster of course. Just as the FSM hid the true age of the earth from us by interfering with science, so it also conspired to hide the free energy Mersenne Banana Cookie interaction from us.

In other words: If you know that the FSM did not create the earth 4000 years ago, then you even more definitely know that there is no free momentum/energy. If you think that we can't know either of these things, then your concept of knowledge sucks.