skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> This jumped out when she pointed out that Microsoft's strategy was to profit off of "artificial scarcity" while Google's was not. Bullshit haha! It's called PageRank: the patented, artificially-scarce algorithm that made them the multi-billion dollar company worth discussing.

I'm not following your extension of artificial scarcity to Google. Do you mean that because PageRank isn't public, it's artificially scarce? That doesn't seem to hold water....there's no anti-user conspiracy theory required to understand why PageRank is private, but rather the fact that it would rapidly render Google Search pretty useless, due to the strong financial incentive for publishers to "teach to the test". A federated Facebook with public APIs would add to user surplus/utility, while a system based on a public PageRank would rapidly degenerate into a measure of how good a website is at matching PageRank, which would waste a ton of resources _and_ make search quality much worse (again, destroying user utility).

Maybe you've misunderstood what artificial scarcity and rent-seeking mean. She's talking about it in the widely-used economic sense of "scarcity that's imposed solely to extract rents, inferior to an alternative method which would increase net utility". A federated Facebook and open-API Windows both fit this neatly[1], and a public-PageRank Google doesn't even come close.

[1] One could make the argument that Facebook needs to be closed for reasons that benefit the user, but I've never heard any compelling arguments for that.
We have much, much more coming soon, in addition to LIDAR/radar data. You can join in with the fun here: https://udacity.com/self-driving-car

It's worth pointing out some other awesome datasets, such as:

• http://research.comma.ai

• https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/deep-learning-sel...

• http://data.selfracingcars.com

Any questions I can answer?
Thanks everyone for the insightful questions! Hope the answers here and the Startup School talk are helpful to our community. This was fun! Singing off now -- I'm hungry and it's time to cook up a 10-minute Gobble dinner.
It was also mentioned on my recent flights in the USA and Europe on various OW airlines as well. Heck even in pre-boarding announcements at the gates. Really not the publicity you want.
WebAssembly: high speed at low cost for everyone [video]
The Washington Post is currently an arm of the DNC, to the point where they run their articles past the DNC prior to publication and where they hold clandestine fundraisers together that the DNC's own lawyers forbade.

While this is readily apparent from reading the DNC email leaks, I've seen very little discussion of it.

EDIT: Might as well cite sources.

Here's the original email from the Wikileaks DB with the mangled formatting: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/2699

Here's a copy of it properly formatted on some news site I've never heard of before: http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/wikileaks-emails-clinton-berni...
Yes, they are quite different.
Yes. Both http://railscasts.com/ & https://www.railstutorial.org/ were instrumental to helping me learn RoR way back when. They have helped thousands, if not, tens of thousands of folks learn web dev/programming from videos. Just search HN and see the good things folks have to say about them.
Realistically: for a while, this company has been engendering a lot of ill will, enough that many people recognize it by name, and many of those same people will quickly upvote any bad news about it.
> infantilism

So if a male chooses another path outside of employment he is to be compared to an infant?

This post should be flagged. That is definitely not okay.
I'm not talking about the content. Talking about the user experience. It does suck, and I'm not even an Apple hater.

I have given up on using the default map for searching anything. Of course the map content itself is the same, but what good is a mobile map if you search for a coffee shop around you in New York and it gives you some grocery store in Scandinavia? I would be forgiving if this happened rarely, but to me it happened very often. I have 4 iDevices and they all have the same problem. This never happens with Google maps.
1. Agreed. It's literally the reason we're building our own hardware. You can't build the future on the current hardware platforms produced by the major players. We're working on the shift.
First, as others have pointed out, there's a promise of profits that SpaceX can sell. Similar to Amazon, who were and are selling investors on the promise of growing and owning online retail, SpaceX can sell investors on the promise of growing and owning the space industry--travel, mining, government contracts, and more.

Secondly, it's worth noting that "billions" isn't as big of a number as you'd think in the context of modern capital markets. PwC published a paper recently that estimated there'd be $100 trillion in so-called assets under management (AuM) by 2020. (http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2014/pwc-global-asse...) The market capitalization of Amazon _today_ is $400 billion.

Theoretically, SpaceX could easily raise all the money it needs and more. I don't know how practical that would be, or even if that's their plan at all. But the salient point here is that there's a _ridiculous_ amount of global capital up for grabs. This ain't the 1950s or 1980s. The rise of the third-world and the pace of global trade has created an almost unfathomable amount of wealth. Even if the markets crash tomorrow and it's cut in half, it's still unfathomable from the perspective of 20 or 30 years ago.

I remember reading an Economist article in the late 1990s (maybe early oughts) that showed using historical data that wealth tended to grow exponentially. (I haven't been able to track it down.) The point of the article was that wealth inequality will naturally increase dramatically because for any time span those with more wealth will accumulate even more wealth, proportionally, then someone poorer. The gap will naturally widen without forced redistribution.

Ignore issues about wealth inequality for a moment and think about what that phenomenon means for the amount of global capital available for investment. All that capital needs to be _invested_ somewhere. Even if appetite for risk never changes, it means the amount of capital available for the most risky ventures will grow dramatically. But perhaps as capital growth outpaces investment opportunities, appetite for risk will increase.

My point being, the practicality of a privately-funded Mars venture is likely to become more practical by the year. So even if it's starry-eyed today, it might not be in 5 or 10 years.
For anyone who wants to build muscle memory in Vim I'm writing 10 Minute Vim, a book of pre-made exercises for practising advanced macros, RegEx, and navigation. It's already helped me learn a number of new commands in just a short time.

https://leanpub.com/deliberatevim
I see no reason for this being wishful thinking, other than the part where you'd need to be 30+ years in the future.
Yeah, exactly. Ending the war on drugs doesn't change that the US has fucked millions of people, prevented them from getting employed, then blamed them for most of this.
Drug testing prior to/during employment doesn't help the matter, either. A cook as a McDonald's doesn't need to be drug tested. Neither does a programmer. The country is full of this moralistic and paternalistic garbage, as is parts of the world within its sphere of influence (like the worst offenders in SE Asia (Singapore, Phillipines, Thailand, etc.)).
The number of people on disability has skyrocketed starting in the 90's.

http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
Basically the difference between a bad thing happened and she did a bad thing.

I think it's fair to say a bad thing happened (secret documents through insecure channels) because she did a bad thing (setting up an insecure server linked to secure systems). There are multiple failures here and hers, especially considering her leadership[+] position, is one of them. Unfortunately you guys have a choice between two objectively bad candidates.

Good luck.

--

[+] You can't have trickly economics in only one direction.
They're becoming pretty commonplace. A friend runs a farm that uses them. The cows come in to be milked when they want to be, which averages about 2.2 times per day, they enjoy getting milked. A back scratching machine gives them a rub (which they love) and they stroll leisurely back to their paddock to eat more of their favourite thing; grass.

Staffing costs are much lower along with the subsequent disasters and animal problems caused by thoughtless staff. The cows are happier than ever and milk production is record-breaking.
They can put your payments on hold. After all, everything goes through them already
Announcing CERT Basic Fuzzing Framework Version 2.8
This is meaningless.
That's another good point. I couldn't be sure if it was fiction or accurate but The Social Network movie kept referencing the exclusivity of the clubs that everyone wanted. He was moving that experience online. So, being the cool thing plus your list being exclusive and in your control could definitely be a driver. Each of these are individually motivating for users.
No, it is factually accurate. Instead of firing the CEO, they decided to pivot. Regardless if it was the decision they would have made with no restrictions placed on the company, it is the decision they made, all external factors included.
That would in fact be their job. Far more so than monitoring each of their fellow citizens for shits and giggles. And porn.
> Why is this a bad thing? Aren't we looking to institute an universal basic income?

UBI is incompatible with open borders. Neo-liberalism doesn't know how to square that circle.
I would go nuts; I prefer to use the whole screen to see what I'm looking at, and if I've just searched a buffer for a function name or whatever, there's a good chance I want to see the whole function and not the (screen height / 2) lines above it. (In emacs this is done with `C-l C-l`, in vim it's `zt`)

While scanning a buffer for some pattern I'll quite often make a one-off keyboard macro that searches for a pattern and then invokes `C-l C-l`, it's very nice to then bounce on the "repeat keyboard macro" key and leave my eyes in the same place while the screen contents change under them.
Many == Russia?
> An animal is also terribly inefficient at converting water and feed into human-consumable nutrients,

I have an old book somewhere that says the milk cow is the most efficient means of converting a rocky hillside covered with grass into human-usable protein.
"a proper social science"

Is 'social science' even a 'proper science' ?
While true, aerospace is still probably one of the best skilled labor/manufacturing jobs available. There are quite a few regulations and certifications that need to be followed/held which makes it more difficult/costly to outsource.

In the case of SpaceX or similar companies that fall under ITAR or do classified work, meeting those security requirements is an additional hurdle to outsourcing, although automation will still have an impact.
No. Deciding is when you have a choice. They didn't have a choice. This is a lie.
Yes, they did. They had a choice to fire Holmes and keep on with the blood testing what have you, and didn't. It is factually accurate and not defending them nor spin to say that. I'm sure it was considered.

This outcome was not a certainty. I think the feds wanted that choice, to be honest. It's a smart play: we don't like Elizabeth Holmes or the work you're doing, but we maybe sorta kinda want to see you succeed because it's a pretty good idea if you'd get your shit together, so pick one and fix it.
"Maybe you've misunderstood what artificial scarcity and rent-seeking mean. She's talking about it in the widely-used economic sense of "scarcity that's imposed solely to extract rents, inferior to an alternative method which would increase net utility". "

Ahhh. That could be it. I didn't realize it was a defined economic term. I thought it meant creating an artificial monopoly to grab a market, lock users into the benefits, deny competition via that tech, and make a financial killing in the process.

If I was wrong, I take back the critique based on artificial scarcity but keep it based on monopoly. PageRank was simply too good to beat. Patenting it led to their billions and continued dominance. They did smart things on top of that success. They might have not pulled it off without being monopolistic about search, though.

"a public-PageRank Google doesn't even come close."

How? It let them dominate search, control much ad revenue, put players with most money on top results, create a major contender in browsing, and later dominate mobile market. All that came from PageRank being both good and patented.
Court Order Censoring Everyone’s Google Search Results Must Be Overturned
> Well, given that most Android users don't do that, and that iOS users do their share of custom ROM installation ...

I never named any specifics on the matter of platform preferences as regards installation of custom roms.

You seem a bit defensive.

> I use an iPhone 6S daily at work, so I'm not one of those people [who ... find computing on devices they don't normally use to be more difficult than computing on devices they normally use]

You're employing a different and less expansive standard of normal use than I. Using a tool for work is using a tool in only a single context.

Unless you have a lot of time to burn playing around on your phone at work, or develop for the phone you use at work, you're not likely to get to know how to use the device very well outside of the specific tasks entailed in your job duties.

> and I don't deign to speak for them or anyone else.

Reference my comment to r00fus above and note the terminology I used when speaking of my opinions.

"I like a happy medium myself.", "I've found", "I can", "to my satisfaction", "I don't have to"

I made no less than five references to myself in a single paragraph where I rendered an opinion on personal preferences. And even then I didn't resort to suggesting experiences that forged my personal preferences dictates what is best for others.

> As far as my experience is concerned ...

"The plural of data is not anecdote."

> yes, Android is better

This is the kind of generalization I have a hard time with. Android is better for some tasks, and iOS for others. Just as Windows is better for some tasks, and macOS for others, and Linux others still. One should always use the right tool for the job. You won't see me making any sweeping claims about which platforms are better.
Ask HN: Best Web App idea for a 2 week sprint?
If you could put together a team of 2-3 people and nerd out for 2 weeks straight, what would you build? List your idea, and if you have a stack in mind throw that in too, why not. But remember has to be done in 2 weeks!
there seems to be a flaw with rebecca's only example. she seems to imply that google is responsible for the conference tables existence, which is most certainly not true. if anything, Google in this case is responsible for restricting local markets, and directing traffic to foreign ones. Conference tables have always been needed, and have always been made (most often sourced locally), Google didn't create the conference table business, it just helped direct conference table buyers to this one particular site. that seems to be to restricting market freedom, not expanding it.
Amazon's app store maybe?
RethinkDB is shutting down
I don't know the actual numbers, but I suspect Amazon's non Play Store apps are doing pretty decently.
Unlikely -- this deal didn't really get any VC deal flow. DFJ invested because Draper's kids were childhood friends of Holmes'. Ellison (not a VC) invested because his investment manager was a college friend of her father's. ATV invested because, well who knows -- perhaps because DFJ invested. Those are the three investors.

No life science VCs invested.
Is Your Big Data Project a “Weapon of Math Destruction”?
In a similar vein desks are now covered in speakers, USB drives, monitors, laptops etc which all have a lifecycle just as the Rolodex and card holder became obsolete.

These items are also harder to produce and have, at least in my eyes, shorter product life
That's what our company does already...kind of. Except we do it with an iPhone only and don't give you a scan yet - though we have proven we can build scans from videos. I won't spam the comment but we exist.
The NSA retaining zerodays and other exploits works if and only if they use their knowledge of the exploits to patch their own systems, which is unlikely enough, and that they share such patches with certain echelons of US corporate society.

Apparently they do it anyway.
What is your software story for this thing?

Are you upstreaming qemu, uboot, Linux, GCC, GDB etc changes?

Will we see a Debian port for this?
Google wouldn't be Google without all that personal data though.
This is going to be psychologically difficult for users to stomach, I suspect. I'm surprised they didn't instead say they'd just take the first $99 of sales - that would put off far fewer people and unless the average book fails to sell more than a handful of copies, it shouldn't take much longer to collect the revenue.
Or, increasingly, the web. Sure some things will always have to be native but that list is getting shorter all the time and would be shorter still if Apple were keeping up with web standards in Safari.
> I'm not saying the units make more sense now. I am saying that failing to recognise the logic by which the units were derived misses some highly salient points.

I can recognise the logic in historical units of measurements, but I do think some of them are forced - "I want a third of a dozen" - wouldn't you just say you wanted four?.
> That isn't how you deal with fraudsters. You tell them nothing, complete stonewall.

And you deal with murderers by putting them in prison, which is equally irrelevant because the person in question is neither.
Can Electricity Stimulate Your Brain to Work Faster?
All you say is correct and I agree that lens speed is not the only element to consider. As you noted, it is a trade-off between different factors.

My main gripe with the 24-105L vs. the 24-70L (i.e. the lens that came second in that chart) is not just speed in itself, but the fact that the former has a zoom extension of more than 4X (my previous comment should have been more exhaustive).

As an old-style guy, I usually am uneasy with zoom ratios over 3X because I believe they are detrimental to quality. So when I have to trade between zoom extension vs. something else, I often go for the latter. The MTF charts for the 24-105 f/4 L [1] and the 24-70 f/2.8 L II [2] seem to confirm my gut feeling...

[1] https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/d... (click on "Read more..." to see the MTF graph)

[2] https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/d... (click on "Read more..." to see the MTF graph)
Yes, but base 10 is the common language we use today. And mm to m, is a lot easier than in to ft...
"The choice is that if you're going to develop software for sale to the public, you can choose to develop software for sale in another market which is not so restrictive and oppressive."

The smartphone 'market' is an oligarchy, ergo, it's not really a free market, and those kinds of principled positions just don't hold.

It's pretty reasonable to argue that Apple's arbitrary control of the AppStore is an anti-competitive practice.

If the market were commoditized, like, the choice you have for where you want to 'eat lunch' or 'buy a car' - it would be different.
Is it 100% true that all that would be needed was to fire Holmes?
While this is a war of anecdotes, I can safely say this has never happened to me. If I search for coffee shops around me, I see...coffee shops around me. The new redesign of maps for iOS 10 has -- at least to me -- a much better UX than the current Google Maps app does, also.
The cloud is all about scale and only having to rent resources when you need them. If you have your home server you have to buy and maintain and pay for those resources at all times. When you make a quick cloud request you only "pay" for the resources you consume.

When I was working on Google Search what really astounded me is how we could leverage hundreds of machines in a single request and still have virtually no cost per search. The reason was that each search used a tiny amount of the total resources of those machines and for a very short time. A total search might have (made up numbers) one minute of computation time, but spread across 200 machines it only takes 300ms from start to finish.

That's the benefit the cloud will provide. You don't want to have a 1000-machine data center available at all times to store billions of possible documents and process your requests with low latency. If we went to a private-network model I fear that the turn-around time would be a lot closer to a human assistant. You'd ask it to do things and then it would get back to you sometime later (seconds? minutes? hours?) when it had finished it's research and come up with an answer.
No, we mean then they wouldn't have had to pivot. She was banned.
Why are you talking about crappy, low paying service jobs? This article is about people not working at all.

And why is XX million people not working a bad thing? This crappy article doesn't for a second question, much less investigate, what these "idle" people are doing with their time or how happy they are compared to those of us who are working for a living.
This is what the USA has forgotten, and why they are such a disappointment to the rest of us. Unjust government can be as abusive as it likes. Just government gains its strength from justice alone and its acts of abuse are its first step towards its inevitable unjustice.

Additional: Abuse is seductive. Abuse from power is absolutely seductive.
How should the law define "reasonable explanation?" In the US that kind of thing is litigated, which small companies can't afford.

Such protections exist for employees, involve lots of lawyers and complexity, and sometimes screw companies and sometimes screw employees and sometimes screw both (though they do also fill an important need). But the economic cost of compliance and management of these rules is quite high, and there are a lot more employees than software developers by several orders of magnitude.
Genetic Algorithms Could Be More Significant Than Machine Learning
So let's say the price is 1 billion dollars, how many people could pay? If the price was lowered to 1 million dollars how many people could pay, and how much more they make than if the price is 1 billion dollars. If the price was then lowered to 100,000 dollars how many people would pay and how much more would they make than if the price is 1 million dollars? So anyway the price that gets you the most money if you have a product that everyone wants is not necessarily the highest price you can possibly charge ( the price that allows you to sell to say, the top 20 richest people on earth)

Finally, if you charge too much people might just wait for your patent to expire and say we'll pay for the cheaper version later (at the risk of dying from age related disease in meantime)

So, given my age, if there was a cure for most age related disease in the next 10-15 years then I expect that the price would be definitely low enough for me to afford it when I needed it.