skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am very happy to see this at least bring up one of the most strange parts of Everett's many-worlds (and others' "many-minds") theories: that in them, you are immortal; for there always exists a possible world which you didn't lose consciousness in, and your final consciousness will only propagate into those worlds.

Searle's objection still seems to hold some water, though. Consciousness does not seem to be a computation because whether something is a computation is observer-relative; for some observers this set of electrical flickering makes sense as a computation to produce a sunflower-like pattern of points based on emitting branches in directions of (pi * the golden ratio) radians... but for the vast majority of observers probably it doesn't seem like anything until I print out a picture of the result; and even then it might not mean anything to those observers (they might be blind, or they might not associate it with sunflowers, or they might have alien brains so differently wired from mine that they simply cannot appreciate art the way that humans can). We actually have formally defined computation to be observer-relative in precisely the way that the status of what words a book contains and what those words together mean is observer-relative (think that in some other parallel universes the English language was exactly the same but that the words for 'cat' and 'dog' were transposed, and so this same book tells a somewhat different story in those worlds).

The problem is that my two bunnies seem to be quite conscious, to say nothing of myself or my girlfriend. It's not just that they're conscious-relative-to-me-but-it-depends-who's-looking... if that's true then it's a very different perspective which almost nobody takes seriously and practices. My bunnies just seem to be conscious, full stop. They appear to have both interests and the capacity to feel pain (observer-relative consciousness), but it appears to be more than just an appearance! In some sense they are objective observers who their own consciousness is relative to; therefore they are objectively conscious in a way that computations just don't seem to be objectively anything.

The hope of the functionalist approach to consciousness, with its common-sensical "anything which could replace this airy-fairy consciousness stuff in all of its functional roles would be equally justified to be called conscious," is therefore that as processes with no-intrinsic-meaning become more complex and more involved, there is some way to say "no, the parts of that don't have much intrinsic meaning by themselves, but you put them together and then this thing is objectively computing X or Y, there is just no other way for an observer to view it, it has passed a complexity threshold beyond which there is only one interpretation of it." Our books, with the cat <-> dog substitution looming in our minds, clearly don't pass this threshold by-and-large, but perhaps things more complicated processes than those books' narratives can?
Scientists find dire ice conditions across Arctic
Doing laundry is still the most time consuming task because it's done sequentially. If there's any build up at all it throw it in the wash, wait, move it to the drier, wait, unload, fold and put away.

Multiple loads means a multi hour time commitment to being on stand by to transfer and continue the process.

The programmer in me actually has resorted to throwing everything in the car and driving to a laundry mat if I have a build up for some life reason. Then I can wash and dry 12 loads concurrently and be done with it all in about 2 hours. Laundry mats are "the cloud" of home chores.

Now if somebody ever manages to automate the process of transitioning from washer, to drier, to sorted and folded in the home then they will rightly make a fortune as the time savings would be off the charts.
Interesting... you're one of the only people "in the wild" I have heard say this.

I've long been of the opinion based on what I've seen and personally found that mobile (including also most tablets) is basically worthless for anything but consumption and casual communication, with a comment or photo being the limit of their creative potential. If I want to really make something I want more I/O bandwidth and a "real OS" where my data can be mine.

Even less charitably I've seen the whole platform as one big dark pattern designed to turn users into passive consumers that can be transparently surveiled.
Every issue you care about is represented by a "special interest," including issues of individual liberty.

The idea that corporations always win is obviously wrong; the entire environmental and labor union movements are testaments to how citizen organizing can outweigh corporate interests before the federal government.
> In fact, all of the U.S. airlines (Delta, United, American, and smaller ones) either sold or parked all of their jumbos.

This is not true quite yet, although it will be true in a couple years. United and Delta still operate a handful of 747s on their densest routes, but they're in the process of being phased out. Here are a couple flights:

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL59/history/20160914/1...

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL278/history/20160914/...
Really interesting, hadn't read that :) . Might be worth a submission of its own.
All acts of resistance have consequences. That's because it's important, and "they" know it's important. I think it's reasonable to assume this gets you put on a watchlist if you're not already.

As others have (snarkily) pointed out, this is a pretty mild form of resistance, so I'd imagine the consequences would be pretty mild.
It probably comes from an earlier experience with a crappier Java. But Java 2, Java 5, and most of all Java 8 (and IMHO, a gradual attitude change from J2EE-style architecture astronautism to Guava-style DRYism) have transformed it into a very pleasant language to use, on a very mature, reliable platform, that also connects to other interesting languages like Scala. I don't know any other popular (popularity matters! a large ecosystem is very useful) language that is as well suited for making very maintainable, low defect codebases. (Although, I'm working on learning golang.)

Java's now-undeserved reputation is just a historical legacy now, but it serves a useful purpose: keeping people like you, who might compete, from using the best tools available. Strangely, I think Java can, at least for a while, count as a "secret weapon" the way Paul Graham described lisp once. (Or is the cat too far out of the bag already? Given how much software is still being unnecessarily written in languages like Python, Ruby, JavaScript that lack type verification, I think Java is still a secret weapon for now)
The Feds Will Soon Be Able to Legally Hack Almost Anyone
Let's Chill
If I'm going to buy an electric car, I don't want to buy a hatchback or something weird looking.

Compare this: http://blogs-images.forbes.com/brookecrothers/files/2016/01/...

to this: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/images/model-3/gal...

In my opinion that's why Tesla has big fans. It's not because people are rallying around the "little guy", it's because we want a car that looks nice and actually has technology from this decade in it.

Edit: I don't mean to knock on the hatchback in particular. I can't articulate it, but this car just communicates the typical EV look. As opposed to something more serious imo.
I was quite sympathetic until I hit the mini-bio at the bottom:

"Matt Kulka works for Local Motors in Phoenix, Arizona. He loves to drive cars around race tracks, his expensive hobby that he just doesn’t want to kick."
What It's Like to Ride in a (Nearly) Self-Driving Uber
> It may be unfeasible to claw back what they got from massively inflating the cost of higher education, but it's more than feasible to cap the damages and force a reckoning that will almost certainly lead to vastly more efficient administrations and more economically healthy graduates.

Sure, I could see being in favour of loan forgiveness if at the same time we completely eliminated federally-subsidised loans. But I don't see that happening: I see us forgiving outstanding loans, then granting even more loans, with absolutely no pressure for students to economise.

True fact: one doesn't need a single-occupancy bedroom or a multi-room suite in order to get a good education. One doesn't need a winning football team. One doesn't need a fancy cafe with subsidised prices; one doesn't need a climbing wall. All one needs for a good education is food, shelter and good professors.

But as long as someone else is (or appears to be) footing the bill, students will angle for the nicest possible way to spend their four, or six, or more, years.
Do you know the guy who did the talk about optimizing Ruby for the way Ruby devs use Ruby? They used an example if an image library clamp function which was a mess. Using sort to clamp a value.

Whoever that guy is, I'd like to be able to say he did an amazing job. Good work on your groups.
The grammar required to put those words together is another matter though.

I wrote down a grammar card with all the verb conjugations (-AR, -IR, -ER verbs) and carried it in my pocket everywhere. When I couldn't remember, I (as soon as practical) pulled it out of my pocket and double-checked.

The most difficult one for me was getting la/el correct. Although by that point I knew the correct gender of each noun, it didn't come out correctly when speaking quickly.
You don't patent the molecule.

You patent the method of synthesis or extraction, and you patent the method for treating a human disease or ailment.

If you discovered a novel use for acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), you could patent that. You are not re-patenting aspirin. It can still be used as an analgesic.

If you discovered a novel process to produce ethanol, you could patent that. You are not re-patenting alcohol. People could still use the traditional fermentation and distillation process. You could even patent a process step to remove the remaining water from azeotropic distilled alcohol.

Obviously, such patents are more monetizable if the molecule in question is expensive to produce by the public domain processes, has no other commonly known uses, or is a controlled substance.
With young kids around, the laundry and responsibility for dependents figures become hours daily, not weekly.

I started dropping off our laundry at my local laundromat about 6 years ago, it immediately improved my quality of life. Now if only they would put it away for me.
> We were told that it was available but we would need a doctor's appointment,a prescription

This goes both ways. There are over-the-counter drugs for sale in the US that are outright banned in some countries (I think Pseudoephedrine is a common one)
I just had a really weird deja-vu when reading this as i wasn't sure if i hadn't read exactly this before, but yes, this article has been on HN just a week ago. But now i see you even mentioned it in the first sentence ;)
No. Source: I only have seen titles with iOS in them most of the time.
If you're working a high-end job (one that not many people would qualify for, presumably), making well over $100,000 per year (FAR above the average family income in the US), then why should you settle for a near-poverty lifestyle?
Here are a few that I quite like, digging up from my bookmarks.

- #define CTO - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8516777
- Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9049208
- Ask HN: How to Be a Good Technical Lead? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10395046
- Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12143266
- How to stop feeling lonely - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7044690
- We only hire the trendiest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326940
- The days are long but the decades are short (my personal favourite post and comments all the time) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9454440
There is no risk to signing this.
I find it curious the tone of some responses on this issue. Google (and not just google; FB, Bing,Baidu) snooping is not a petty issue that will just go away. It is a matter of deep concern at par with any existential threat mankind has ever faced; up there with climate change and nuclear war. Never before has mankind had to face such an assault to privacy. The data google collects is the next best thing to reading its users minds. This is all the more scary because

1. It is a private company
2. state actors have a vested interest in aligning with google and other such companies and (as the article points out) will deliberately lapse in their regulatory obligations.

The privacy wars are on and google et-al have won the opening skirmishes. I predict that in response to rising public awareness (not outcry, there is no outcry) google and other invaders of privacy will come up with algorithms that tone down recommendations and mask the amount of data being captured without actually reducing it. The citizenry will be lulled into false complacency and the encirclement will proceed apace.

Large unbridled Corporations with unchecked power have proven through history to be venal and predatory. We are witnessing the birth of a new phase that will leave a scar on mankind and make the sins of the Church, Hitler, North Korea and every other despotic regime that has tried to limit human freedom through the ages look amateurish if we do nothing about it now.
I feel gratified that you mentioned this. Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" obsesses about apartments. I suppose this is because financial opportunities were otherwise constrained. In this story at least cheating seems to have been the norm.
Yeah, sounds like a dream for advertisers and not so much for users. This two examples certainly don't sell it over increased battery life and privacy for me. I think it should be opt in and I'm sticking with iOS.
As someone who has done strategy for NGOs for years... the petition doesn't make change, of course not. It makes a mailing list with consistency bias in the NGO's favor. Once you've signed a useless petition, you are MUCH more likely to do the next thing they ask of you. Tell a friend, donate money, call a politician, attend a rally, whatever. It is a very important tool, but it is a gateway tool.
Apples ought to be compared with apples: http://blogs-images.forbes.com/brookecrothers/files/2016/01/...
Unless you state what is wrong and what is correct. This has no meaning.
It's actually very easy to disable location tracking across all your Google devices and services.

https://myaccount.google.com/ and click Privacy.

I did this and also cleared the (kind of cool, really) history they'd built up over the years. It took maybe 10 minutes.

The amount of data Google had collected was impressive. It showed vacations I'd forgotten about, airports I'd transferred in, that kind of stuff.
Google Photos for iOS is horrible about this - there are only two location settings, (1) no location services or (2) always on. The sensible default would of course be (3) on while I'm using this app. There's absolutely no reason for photos to be (literally) tracking us while we're doing non-photo things other than better-monetizing us for advertisers. Even if we nevermind the privacy implications, stop burning my battery.
For me it was:

"My salary was about on-par with what I was making at my last job in Phoenix — just barely breaking into the six figures — but housing costs were significantly different."

Who in their right mind would move to the Bay Area on a Phoenix salary?!
Agree most probably don't know the history. TL;DR is a good example of how people can date themselves by how they communicate. They enter into something new and start to copy something that they see because they don't understand the nuance. Then the nuance disappears because of that new usage.

In reverse (with much older people) we have a few customers who pay by check and send a cover letter as well attached to the check (a formal holdover from olden times). Attaching the invoice is sufficient obviously.
> Even assuming all goes well, you've prevented yourself from doing any other work, like rendering views that don't depend on that data.

Is that right? `await` is non-blocking, no?
I'm really rooting for Tesla here. "Tech start-ups", like Tesla, are disrupting lots of companies that have been doing seemingly nothing for consumers because they haven't needed to or, when they did, things it were half-assed.

Tesla is much an example of how Tech People can make things better. What makes me worried is they're not taking the high road. They're pumping out cars and not following the smart approaches. They're making mistakes that have already been made (thats not innovation or iterating fast...). They may screw up the narrative.

I'd still rather use my ok Honda Civic while I wait for a Model 3 in the future than get the Bolt.
Clarifying. Yes, I am in favor of free market, free entrepreneurship, and competition in most industries. E.g.: I favor free market for food, as opposed to Govt fixing food prices... and it seems to be very efficient, much better than Poland in the 80s!!

In a few limited industries, such as healthcare, I am much less in favor.

>you're suppose to do these things BEFORE you actually need them

Exactly. I paid full price in a single-payer system, not subsidized by anyone, where prices have been negotiated in advance, and it is a lot less costly. I paid even less than the co-pay in the US! I am insured here, so my insurance takes the rest, but it's super expensive for them. And therefore for me in my premium. The magnitude of the difference is insane, but it makes sense given the dynamics of that industry. Hence calling for a different system, just for that industry: it shows to be a more effective in many developed countries.
That is excellent advice for many lifestyle sorts of things :)
Related post: Does asking Ask HN 'Does asking “Why am I being downvoted” get upvotes?' get answers?
As a Math/Science teacher who has to make decisions every day about who and what to teach, I agree that "with a broad education we are fishing for advantages in the future". I see a similarity with playing sport. When we are young, we play various sports. Some will make a career out of a sport they are good at. Some will continue to play occasionally just for enjoyment it brings. Most will probably benefit health-wise from the experience. Similarly with Math/Science education. It may become a career, an occasional interest, or simply a memory that gives some quantitative insight into what goes on around us.
If you want scientists to share data, make it easy for them
Having a very clear version history of both the laws in place, and the bills that made those laws, would be super useful in answering this question.

Are the laws / rules for that publicly accessible?
> You can't see a problem with the release of such politically charged info? That some people, even if they follow their employer's rules about not possessing on the job, would lose their jobs if that information was released? Or how such information is being used to trash people's careers in our field?

Most of the stuff is overblown.

I've worked in public and private sector jobs where my or my family's political affiliation, public displays of support (ie. campaign contributions), current and past salary history and other info were all potentially career impacting, and all trivially available to the public. The reality is, that stuff didn't matter too much at all.

New York's handgun laws are both insane. That's a separate issue.
It depends on if we're talking about Pakistan and India dusting each other, or the US and Russia pulling the trigger. In the former case it's as uncertain as you said, but in the latter to be honest, we're done. Huge areas will be utterly toxic, and there will be infrastructure or meaningful leadership to let anyone know where those are.

So I grant you that something a bit less hopeful and dramatic than 'Mad Max' is more than possible, but only as part of a long slide into the end of our species.

While "Humans" would almost certainly survive (for a while), the odds of any given human (i.e. you or me) surviving are pretty poor. At best you'd be looking at generations of struggle and misery, and then what? Our way of life came to pass by a number of factors including the ready availability of coal. That's... not coming back either. Resources that don't' require extreme mining are generally depleted already, from fossil fuels to various metals.

The various steps that brought us up from mud huts don't necessarily work for another round.
Dishwashers only save a little time. Most dishes still have to be rinsed in the sink first or else the leftover food plugs up the machine. And then putting away dishes takes just as much time.

Doing laundry is a lot more than loading and unloading. If you have small children then you have to check everywhere for stains and apply something like Spray 'n Wash first. And then folding takes a lot of time. (There is a folding machine launching soon but it's expensive and might not be reliable https://www.foldimate.com/ .)

I've tried a couple of different Roombas. They simply don't work very well. The rollers get tangled on rug fringes. They get stuck under furniture. The suction is weak. They require frequent cleaning. In the end it's less hassle just to use a regular vacuum.
Show HN: Open-source face search engine
Without supercharging infrastructure, this vehicle will be bound to relatively short distances and then a long charge time.

I'm glad there's a bit of competition, though.
Maybe he just has a thing for Nissans.
You original

> How do I opt out of google reading my email when I communicate to someone who had a Gmail account?

Perhaps the one confusing and using wrong terms is not me.
IIS != .NET
This article insinuates GM is beating Tesla to the punch on the "everyman" electric car as though it's some big surprise that an auto manufacturing giant is able to produce something at scale much quicker than a scrappy upstart. The bigger story is that it took this scrappy upstart and its "[c]ocky billionaire" CEO for this lumbering behemoth to inch their rudder 1 degree away from cranking out SUVs.
> Well, I can assure you that if I don't clean my apartment, nobody is going to show up magically and do it for me.

The roomba and our cleaning lady are magical?

It's very simple: I get paid x/hr, the roomba as time advances effectively approaches a cost of 0/hr of work (same goes for the clothes and dishwasher) and the 1 hour the cleaning lady spends here is cheaper than what either of us earn during an hour. Why would we possibly spend our valuable time doing that when we can outsource it to a person and a robot for much less?
The neural network zoo
> That is not correct.

It is in fact correct. You have an outdated claim by Snowden which is not supported by any evidence, this year NSA released emails of his 'internal' communications with FOIA and it was discussed (here on HN [0]). As far as documented evidence his only attempt to raise an issue internally was emailing legal counsel regarding a 'test question' - this is laughable.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11837578
Regardless of what happens with this app, it's an amazing project that is coming from personal experience and a desire to do good by others. She has a bright future indeed!
We're the flâneurs.

I thought about reddit and subreddits while reading this article (and HN is just an off-brand subreddit), and I can't disagree more.

These kind of websites are funnels that can satiate someone's need for novelty, while exposing them primarily to pages and ideas that a sub-community assembled around and collectively agree upon. The exploration hits a hard wall of very diminished returns once the explorer meets the sub-culture and the ideas they like.

In many ways, the links in my Facebook timeline are a better vector for exposure to new things because my IRL friends and relations are a wider variety of people than congregate in a subreddit (or other specific social forum).