skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>"...suing small farmers who accidentally grow your crop..."

The Wikipedia page seems to paint a much different picture regarding Monsanto's legal cases. Everything that I'm reading seems to indicate willful infringement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases

"...Monsanto has stated it will not 'exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means.' The Federal Circuit found that this assurance is binding on Monsanto, so that farmers who do not harvest more than a trace amount of Monsanto's patented crops 'lack an essential element of standing' to challenge Monsanto's patents."
...
"The court record shows, however, that it was not just a few seeds from a passing truck, but that Mr Schmeiser was growing a crop of 95–98% pure Roundup Ready plants, a commercial level of purity far higher than one would expect from inadvertent or accidental presence. The judge could not account for how a few wayward seeds or pollen grains could come to dominate hundreds of acres without Mr Schmeiser’s active participation, saying ‘...none of the suggested sources could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality evident from the results of tests on Schmeiser’s crop’" – in other words, the original presence of Monsanto seed on his land in 1997 was indeed inadvertent, but the crop in 1998 was entirely purposeful."

That's not to say that they haven't pulled any jerk moves: "In 2002, Monsanto mistakenly sued Gary Rinehart of Eagleville, Missouri for patent violation. Rinehart was not a farmer or seed dealer, but sharecropped land with his brother and nephew, who were violating the patent. Monsanto dropped the lawsuit against him when it discovered the mistake. It did not apologize for the mistake or offer to pay Rinehart's attorney fees."

If it's patent law that we find outrageous, then we should be directing our rage at patent law.

Edit: I hadn't heard of the Indian farmer suicide problem before reading your comment, but to lay it at the feet of Monsanto ignores many other potential contributing factors: "Activists and scholars have offered a number of conflicting reasons for farmer suicides, such as monsoon failure, high debt burdens, government policies, public mental health, personal issues and family problems."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India
Some of the very best developers I know did well without much schooling.

Others did very well after finishing scool.

Prepare to put lot of effort into getting a job and advancing your career if you choose to go without though.
Here's the quote from the original source[0], it doesn't make it entirely clear but may add some context:

> Later at Stanford, Mayer found herself in a group setting that was less social, more comfortable, and more familiar for her. As an upperclassman in symbolic systems, she was tapped to teach a class.

> She took to it naturally.

> Computer science professor Eric Roberts, still Mayer’s mentor, supervised her teaching. He says she was “unusually good at it” and “extremely effective.”

> After Mayer taught a course in the spring, Roberts took a survey of her students. The results were astounding: They loved her — even if she did sometimes talk “a mile a minute.”

> Roberts asked Mayer to stick around Stanford to teach another class over the summer; she readily agreed.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20130826113249/http://www.busine...
> the design would have been self-evident
> it just "seems" obvious

I really don't understand what these comments bring to this discussion, or any discussion. Evidently, you were not there, and a person who was is telling us the story. Your opinion that the past facts don't align with your expectations is not relevant.
WW3 UPDATE TO RUSSIA BOMBS US AND UK BASES,KERRY HOLDS TALKS IN RUSSIA,UK NEEDS
Recursion call should be exactly the same as an ordinate function call. The following is an example of asm code gen for function definition and recursive function call. Code gen to VM code should be similar. Hope it help.

Assume the following AST.

FN_DEF: { NAME: foo, PARAMS: [int4 param1, int4 param2] }
LOCAL_VARS: [int4 var1, int4 var2, int4 var3]
...
ASSIGN: { var1, CONST: 0x1 }
ASSIGN: { var2, ADD:{ 0x2, param1 } }
...
var3 = FN_CALL: { foo, ARGS: [var1, var2] }
...
RETURN: { var3 }

The generated code would be (all numbers are 10-based instead of hex for simplicity):

fn_foo:
push ebp ; save the caller's old frame pointer
mov ebp, esp ; the new frame pointer to current stack ptr
sub esp, 20 ; make new space in stack for params and locals
; EBP points to the base of the current frame
; the frame has 20 bytes in the stack
; var1 at [ebp-4]
; var2 at [ebp-8]
; var3 at [ebp-12]
; param1 at [ebp-16]
; param2 at [ebp-20]
...
mov [ebp-4], 1 ; assign 0x1 to var1
mov [ebp-8], 2 ; assign 0x2 to var2
add [ebp-8], [ebp-16] ; add param1 to var2
...
push [ebp-4] ; push var1 for the function call
push [ebp-8] ; push var2 for the function call
call fn_foo ; call function foo at address fn_foo
; the current EIP is saved in stack
; the return value will be in EAX
mov [ebp-12], eax ; save function return value to var3
...

mov eax, [ebp-12] ; set function return value from var3
mov esp, ebp ; pop frame
pop ebp ; restore old EBP to previous frame
ret ; return to the caller by popping the
; caller's address from stack into EIP.
; Execution will continue at the restored EIP address.
False dichotomy. People who currently assume that there is no correlation between skin pigmentation and intelligence are unlikely to stop believing in equal human rights if genetic studies were to prove them wrong.

On the other hand, people who believe that there is such a correlation have a convenient excuse to consider themselves objectively superior while smugly granting rights to the inferior races.
Boy after several of these types of incidents, this really creates the impression that a hacker can just arbitrarily break into anyone's e-mail account that he wants to. (This particular article mentions a hack of someone's personal Yahoo e-mail account, and another person's Gmail account, plus their DNC work e-mail accounts)

This seems like magic; I mean what methods are they using? Is it mostly phishing, if phishing is really that effective? Scratchin my head here as to how they can just grab any account they want.
All you really need is access to a computer, the Internet, and some self determination. A degree may help you in some ways but it's not essential for many jobs, including being a web developer. With that said - there's nothing stopping you from pursing both your degree and starting to freelance to see if you like it. If nothing else - it'll show potential employers that you're motivated and likely improve your skills in the process. You don't need permission to do great work. Good luck!
Made me tear up a bit. When I was ten, Popular Electronics was the first magazine to which I subscribed. I remember how excited I was when the May '65 issue was waiting for me when I got home from school.
No, it's been about 10 years. I now teach at a university but not math. But I've been having these recurring dreams (not quite nightmares, but I do wake up in a slight panic) since college.
OK, I'm a little slow. I didn't get it (do now). :-)
Breaking Free of the Grid (Bayesian Opt vs. Grid Search, History and Comparisons)
Why do you say it's analogous to "requiring us to constantly record all of our vocal communications"? Don't they just want to make it possible for police to record electronic communications, the same way police can already record vocal communications with a warrant and sufficient resources?
I keep recommending http://www.heavybit.com/library/video/fixing-herokus-pricing... (you need to click the header for the video to start) in how much thinking goes into pricing of the bigger SaaS companies.

For my own SaaS pricing we didn't display prices for months and provided custom quotes. Then set prices (standardized email) and saw at least 50% of users thought it's too expensive. We adjusted a bit but realized however low there will always be users you can't please.
Tesla will be offering automation for (presumably) less money in 2021. I don't think Apple can afford to not have automation, nor do I think they could offer something appealing enough to overcome not having automation.

If Tesla can create automation in a short amount of time, I have no doubt that a massive computer company filled with smart software engineers and a maps group can do it.
here, i will spell it out for you, as the article so carelessly evaded:

the nail that stands out is hammered down

people HATE those who are creative (don't bother with your counter-example to my blanket statement; it isn't relevant) and make a mess out of them from an early age. it also doesn't help that creative types tend to be eccentric; once again, the nail that stands out is hammered down. being hammered down results in depression/sadness that coexists with other difficulties like losing loved ones etc.
"They're not saving 25% on payroll taxes, benefits, workers comp, PTO, training time and management overhead. In fact, more people working fewer hours increases most of these costs."

* Payroll taxes: OF COURSE they're saving the same amount on taxes! It's not like they pre-pay taxes on an assumed amount. It's a % of what they pay you. If they pay you less, they pay less taxes on your behalf.

* Workers Comp: Firms play insanely low rates on workers comp for programmers, and workers comp is generally calculated at (RATE for job class) * ($100 payroll allocated to job class). If you pay the employee less, your workers comp premium decreases at the same rate.

* PTO: If the company wishes to offer full time PTO benefits to a part timer, they may, but many businesses have separate PTO policies for full and part time employees, including slower accrual for part timers.

Training time and management overhead are probably the real costs here.

> In fact, more people working fewer hours increases most of these costs.

More people working fewer hours could also increase productivity (that's the point of this discussion) thus could increase revenue and profit, as well.

If you pay 10% more and make 20% more revenue, that's a GOOD DEAL
Hes not saying that there's not good reason for it...

It's a fact of life that you have to play to win. The richest in history took extraordinary risks to get there, and for every winning risktaker there were 10 losing risktakers.

This also goes hand in hand with why hard work and perseverance are virtues.
> Honestly, if you handle your own financing so that doesn't get mixed into the deal, have a hard and fast value in mind for a potential trade-in, and go to a no-haggle dealer,

You just described less than 1% of car transactions.
I hope that this is sarcastic?
I know I may be asking to go down a rabbit hole, but:

(1) Does the NN use a deep architecture?

(2) How does the CNN performance compare with other algorithms?

(3) Have you looked at how performance varies with different features, frequency cut-offs, etc.?
At the risk of outing myself as "sometimes unproductive," I have found this to not be the case at all.

I had a really clear example a number of years ago where I had been working full-time, but changed things up from salaried to strictly hourly and started coming in exactly six hours a day instead of eight to "however long it took" hours.

It made a remarkable difference -- I arrived rested and with most of the things that can be distractions (errands, paying bills, dealing with other personal issues) already taken care of. I was able to get down to work and focus hard for six hours, and my own productivity on the project increased. It was kind of surprising actually.

I doubt I'm the only programmer who ever experienced something like this.
> they don't need to pay Steam 30% of sales to host files on a server

Publishers have tried to avoid this and people have whined endlessly about how horrible their alternatives are (eg. origin) while steam continues to be a mediocre at best experience.
the bigger concern is the possibility of violating a trademark. If a McDonalds is a pokestop and the image is the golden arches logo that is a trademarked logo that you are now associating with your game. The average person can be confused and think there is some association between pokemon and mcdonalds. That mcdonalds is sponsoring pokemon in someway and hurt their brand
That was Backus conclusion after his FP forray.
"It makes a lot more sense to create an autonomous vehicle and treat the entire cabin as an interactive experience that people will spend hours a day playing with and spending money in."

Would be cool if Apple skipped the "car" and went straight to a stylish and modern "RV", basically a small apartment that can also drive you around (autonomously).

Look at this RV tour and imagine something that's a bit bigger in living space (but same size overall (no big engine, no drivers area etc)):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tylz5sfCAOc

It might not be realistic yet, but in a few years maybe, especially if solar panels gets better. Which i'm guessing Apple is doing a lot of research on as we speak...

And if you loose/somebody tows it, you'd just log on to iCloud and use the "Find my House" feature ;-)
I'm doing this now. I've found a contract job where I can work 20 hours per week (4 hours per day). I don't think I ever want to go back. At least, not for someone else. I'm actually spending the rest of my time working on my own projects, and that doesn't really feel like work at all. My own projects are anything from mobile or web apps, to short films, art, music, electronics, inventions, etc. etc.

I wish I didn't have to spend any time at all on contract work, but unfortunately I'm not yet able to pay the bills with my side projects. Hopefully one day.
How else are you supposed to compare? Actual GDP? That certainly doesn't make any sense.
The answers already here address the direct effect in terms of company costs - there are fixed costs of an employee as well as variable costs.

I am more interested in what it does to your typical team in your something-like-typical corporate environment: I think it would tank team productivity. Instead of programmers getting up to maybe 6 hours' writing software done, programmers would get significantly less time doing that. And we would all hate it.

This effect would happen because a) there are interruptions, and communications overheads to being part of a team; and b) because you need a bigger team to cover the reduced productivity, all of your things that scale poorly with the size of a team mean you need an even bigger team, with each person therefore doing less development.

I think companies which are smart about this whole building software thing are more interested in teams and their capabilities than individuals and their capabilities, and I think many of those would look at this in the same way as I just did.
This is a really good idea. No more if (keycode == 71 && keycode == 73 stuff), and trying to remember which is which, and having to look up each one.
I used to use Turbo search as the most meta- and all-encompassing search I could get. Hit the major non-meta and meta engines plus a ton of specialized and obscure ones with ability to configure or filter all that. Long time ago. I'm not even sure the one in this link is it as it's long gone.

http://websearch.about.com/od/generalsearchengines/ss/Early-...

Turns out Wikipedia has a nice list of search engines. Didn't realize there's so many but not surprised given lower barrier-to-entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metasearch_engines
LeJOS, Java for Lego Mindstorms
His core point was not correct. iOS has about 39% of smartphone share in the U.S., 27% in China, and 19% in Europe. Those are not insignificant.
>I'm not sure I follow here. You want 75% of the salary to do the same amount of work? That doesn't really make sense to me.

They want 75% of the salary to do the same amount of work... and then go home.
> I marvel at how Lenin (allegedly?) failed to realize that he wasn't implementing Marx

What? Failed to realize? Leninist vanguardism was, viewed optimistically, a deliberate modification of key elements of Marxism to address the fact that Lenin wanted to avoid the mess of actually having to have a mature capitalist society with the features Marx saw the transition from capitalism to communism through socialism requiring, what with Russia not having gotten there yet.

Viewed cynically, it was a modification that allowed using the language of Marxism -- an idea that had quite a bit of appeal internationally at the time -- to implement a centralized authoritarian dictatorship governed by a narrow elite, as well as providing the cover of a superficial theory that provided a veneer of an excuse for how "Marxism" could be applied a country with what was largely, in Marxist economic terms (not traditional political terms), a feudal rather than capitalist system.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone claim that Lenin's divergences from Marx were unintentional.
Oh no. Someone meddling in US politics for a change.
"The thing most far away from a von Neumann machine that is commercially significant is the FPGA and it is nothing like what people deriding the von Neumann machines have in mind."

Are you referring to Rudeceron architecture FPGAs here?
I have almost no data to back this up, but it's my suspicion that the current workweek is something of a lowest common denominator: across all job types, company needs, etc., it maximizes productivity while keeping most HR polices identical.

I mean, imagine the administrative overhead to create a system like you propose: you might want to work 25% less, but I really think a decent number of young and single software engineers could actually work something like 40% less and be OK at a 40% reduction in salary. Somewhere there is someone that is working on an interesting problem and, in spurts, wants to work 30% more. This variability increases as you look at, say, the sales team, the accounting team, etc, and all other positions that have different optimal working styles.

Now, imagine creating a system to make sure you pay people fairly in that world (remember, not even everyone with the same role/job title starts with the same "100%"). Or a way find out who your real best/most essential employees are... and so on. I honestly think that the workweek, as it is, exists mostly because as a company becomes sufficiently complex a few assumptions need to be made in order to keep it functioning properly, and '5 days, 8-10 hours a day' (or whatever) is an assumption that everyone can more or less stomach - even if they don't enjoy it.
> In spite of the seemingly ideal flat organization,

Why does this seem ideal? A flatter hierarchy is almost always preferable, but taken to an extreme it seems like inevitable chaos.
I'd also recommend "Lucky Or Smart?" from Bo Peabody, who built Tripod in the mid 90s, one of the early successful web startups of the 90s.

https://www.amazon.com/Lucky-Smart-Fifty-First-Time-Entrepre...
We could ask the aviation guys, they also have autopilot and cabin cleaning crews ...
Anyone can make a trend by selecting their date range. In the 70's in Ireland:

In 1972, there were over 12,000 shooting and bombing attacks in Northern Ireland; by 1977, this was down to 2,800.[41] In 1976, there were 297 deaths in Northern Ireland; in the next three years the figures were 112, 81, and 113.
A lot of good responses here, but I think the main reason is being overlooked: someone willing to work more would take your job. They'd take your work by 'helping' with 'emergencies' that came up while you were out, then you'd be marginalized and you'd fail.

It would take a powerful credo from above to preserve such a position amid such politics. Most management probably doesn't even have enough power to do it. They already have problems getting people to take vacation for the same reason.

And it's the same reason you're probably already working more than 8 hours once e-mail and Slack hours are included (if not outright spending more than 8 hours at the office).
I agree with this. I find that when I'm down/depressed, esp. from a major life change I 100% stop all creative pursuits. My mother passed away 3 years ago last spring and I was in the middle of recording new material for a music project. I basically full-stopped and didn't touch it again until about a month ago and finally got back on track and finished it. I went through a similar few year hiatus in 2006 when I got divorced.

Anyway, it's nice to have a little better insight into this stuff even if I don't agree with the article, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Here's a link to the single if anyone is curious about it:

https://n-o-w-h-e-r-e.bandcamp.com

https://soundcloud.com/n_o_w_h_e_r_e/sets/the-traveller
> there is no basis for calling any particular image, that you experience from the light that an object reflects, the actual appearance of that object

Sure, but "the actual appearance of an object" is generally understood to mean, "the actual appearance of an object relative to a typical human visual system", at least when the phrase is uttered by one human to another.
We are getting a flow of immigrants because the civil war in Syria did not stop, and instead rage on and on destroying the infrastructure and economy there that is needed to sustain the civilian population there.

We are squeamish because we do not want to send young men and women to die in some godforsaken country, doing god know what for god knows how long.

Remember the last time that happened? Oh yes, the Iraqi occupation that seem to go on forever and forever, draining the blood and treasure of the United States.

Either we pay it now, or we pay it later.
Draft might've been written before the bugfix.
BG's reproductive success is a bit of an outlier by historical and even contemporary standards across cultures.

Ibn Saud, founder of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabian, had 45 sons alone. Such large families continue in the House of Saud.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud

There's the oft-cited case of Ghengis Khan, who by DNA estimates may have as many as 16 million surviving progeny. Estimates of the numbers of his actual children are quite hard to come by, and range from low (he had only one official wife) to many thousands.

Gates, in particular, is aware of several modern challenges, including overpopulation. His "reproductive success" may well be a calculated strategy for long-term advantage. Or simply altrusitic motive.
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How to Write for People and Get Traffic from the First Day [+62 Tips from Experts]
The responder doesn't even work at apple (from his other post: "I'm not an engineer at apple" https://www.quora.com/What-does-a-day-in-the-life-of-an-Appl... ). His response was also vague enough to apply to most tech companies.

I thought it was suspect, since apple employees tend to be very quiet on social media and in conferences.
It's always the people most against innocuous suggestions about the possibility of differences that use words like "superiority." That is your hang-up, not mine.
Trisolaris!
How is Chomsky perceived on the field of linguistics today? My impression was that his theories are well respected, but recently I've come across several people dismissing his work as outdated and even wrong. Not sure whether this is just an attempt by people to denigrate him because of his political beliefs though.
Ah, I think I found an answer:

https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...

And yep it appears they started with primarily phishing.
Well, given that government agencies have been overlooking things for ages too, I would still remain suspicious.
There's evidence that gut flora have a hand in many diseases including obesity, Crohn's, depression, etc. We know so little about it, as is the case with many of the details of our body's daily functions.
How a Cleveland-born doo-wop song invented  and sustained  American R&B