skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Now they are in a situation where they are damned if they do, damned if they don't. And people immersed in echo chambers will accuse them of bias no matter what.

You are making an assumption that algorithms can not be biased. Earlier, humans were biased. Now, algorithms are biased.
If it is truly social then it will spread misinformation like wildfire. That's what people do -- gossip game magnified. That said, maybe Facebook is best when it is just spreading obviously unimportant content (in the sense of national and global affairs), like birthday wishes and cat pictures. No harm if the cat is implicated in wild conspiracy theories.

It's not the cat pic sharing that is paid for by entities with motive and interest in spreading misleading messages.
Okay but to be fair, there are something like 6000 tweets every second. Are they
not moderating because they believe in the principle of free speech, or because
it would be impractical?

I do think that they manually curate their trending sidebar. After Comey
announced that the emails on the Wiener laptop were cleared by the FBI, the
sidebar looked like this: http://i.imgur.com/9LW0iaU.png

Now, since when do hashtags get an explanation underneath them? Who wrote that
explanation and why? Why doesn't it show the amount of tweets below it like
every other trend? I had never seen that before.

And in this particular case, if they did manually put that there, I think
they're vindicated in the sense that they're actively trying to not spread
misinformation. Because if I had gone on twitter and saw "Comey" trending, and I
hadn't read about the announcement that she'd been cleared, I'd simply think
that a lot of Americans were talking about it within the context of an ongoing
investigation, and I'd get the sense that twitter users were collectively
rallying against Clinton, rather than for her.

And that, in essence, is the real problem that I have with manual curation by
FB/Google/Twitter/etc. People are underestimating how much trust the general
population puts into algorithmically produced content, and how much of a
betrayal of trust it is for them to inject something into that. They're
underestimating just how quickly we've learned to interpret algorithmically
produced content and infer certain things about it. And in spite of the fact
that the sidebar could have mislead you to think something else was being
expressed by those tweeting about Comey than was actually taking place, I also
think the public is more aware of the shortcomings of algorithmically produced
content than we give them credit for.

If I watch Fox/MSNBC/CNN/etc, I know that there's an implicit bias to the
pundits and the guests and the networks themselves. I factor that into whatever
content I receive from them.

But when you have Twitter trends that are organically produced 95% of the time,
and you silently inject something into that, you've done something much more
sinister than a news network leaning towards a particular angle. You've taken a
metric that a lot of Americans trust entirely to be reflective of the whole
country, and you've elevated a certain few or silenced a few others.

That's significantly more powerful. You can provide the illusion that millions
of people do or don't feel a certain way. It's the most dangerous thing to
happen this election cycle.
I can't do that. Partly because confidence is not me; But partly also because I'm afraid of discovering, after 15 years struggling to interest women, that the answer was that simple. Given how butthurt I am with the topic, I admit that this discovery would hurt me a lot. Do unconfident men, no matter how generous they are and how well they work, get no girl, which gives a major handicap in life?
Watson scoring something for truth is only as good as the data drawn from. Who decides that data? Jeopardy questions center around long-established, non-controversial information; how does a Watson-like system evaluate unprecedented breaking news? It's not a question of the language used, it's a much, much higher-order issue that current Watson sidesteps.
I wonder if they have already picked a height for it. Four metres sounds good to me.
Announcing Rust 1.13
I do hope 18F remains and even grows.
If the first paragraph is the extent of your concerns with Erlang (which are reasonable), they are more than addressed by Haskell. Compiled and very statically typed.
> Voting is a fundamental human right.

So is liberty, and so is life, and we deprive convicts of those rights too.

> If there's one demographic that should be allowed their say on what society feels is legal and illegal, it's those who society has chosen to punish.

That's a bit of a non-sequitur: why should those who have chosen to violate the social compact have a voice in it?

> Otherwise, you create the possibility of a tyranny of a minority which comprises the majority of the electorate.

That's also a non-sequitur: if they are disenfranchised, they're no longer part of the electorate.
Clinton even went so far as to label half of Trump's supporters as "deplorables....racist,sexist,homophobic..".

You left out by far the worst part of that, she said we were "not America", that we were "irredeemable".

Your devil's advocate offer doesn't strike me as relevant, you're trying to build some common ground or the like, right? Well, there's no common ground to be found when one side wholeheartedly believes you, and by you I mean in particular myself and my family, aren't even worth trying to reeducate, aren't even capable of that, are, to quote Merriam Webster "not able to be saved, helped, or made better"

Just what future to you think we have in our opponents' Utopia?

Anyway, near your close you say "This worries me greatly, as a very zealous proponent of free speech - I wouldn't want a significant contingent of voters, enough to sway a whole election, to feel like they cannot voice their opinions publicly, even if I disagree with them."

Is it really true you believe this isn't already the case? If you habituate HN, did you fail to notice the strong calls to purge Peter Theil from Facebook's board and Y Combinator's partners?

At the other end of the economic classes, all the violence and vandalism against Trump supporters, which thanks to Project Veritas we know was in part directed and paid for Clinton's campaign? That takes "contempt" to a higher (or is that lower?) level than your thorough citations of mere words.
Ah yes, Ddos ing websites of government officials that you disagree with.

So tolerant. Much liberal.
Security for Startups – Interview with Threat X CTO Andrew Useckas
Snapchat Spectacle Vending Machines
So what are you suggesting for why the all polls were wrong? What do you think contributed to the inaccuracy of the polls?
KS and OK both have access to shipping ports, at least at the barge level.
So you can submit ideas here I see. I submitted a plea to embrace climate change from an economic standpoint - "renewable energy technologies will be in high demand, and there is a huge opportunity for whichever nation is first to market." Perhaps the prospect of making zillions in solar panel sales can give them pause.
For those wondering how this got done so quickly, both campaigns had transition offices in DC--funded in part with federal dollars--that got started months ago.

The modern presidency is so complex that a transition can no longer be accomplished effectively in the time between November 8 and January 20. So a bipartisan project created the concept of multiple transition offices that get government funds to operate.

Obviously the Clinton transition office is in the process of winding now right now, and the Trump office is expanding rapidly.
"What is worse: a custom designed U.S. government voting machine for all federal elections made by the FEC, or tens of different companies, selling their closed source machines to state governments for profit."

Um, I see what you're getting at, but the government would definitely create a monoculture and may create a single point of failure. The choice is less obvious than you may think is based on your phrasing.

To which I'd say the solution is less about getting the FEC to do it, and more about the process. This needs to be an open and very public affair. It doesn't help us to have the FEC do it if they do it behind closed doors and create a closed-source computer-based system that requires all voting machines to be hooked over insecure networks to a central closed-source insecure server or something.
the elite mainstream media and the supposed-to-be-independent reporters are the biggest losers in this election, as they took sides so strongly that the other 50% will never bother to have anything to do with them. facebook needs improvement? sure, but more important, those biased media outlets will be irrelevant for most of the people due to not only technology advancement, but also what the news industry has been doing over the last few decades, i.e. they're all so biased, that you always know what they're going to say, why bother reading there.

anyone can tell me one true independent news source in US today? there is _none_.
You realize that most people don't emigrate with the express desire to become a public servant in their new home, right? This person could easily be leaving due to the rhetoric that affects people of color, or women. Sorry that isn't a noble enough of a reason to leave, but that's how it is for some. People don't want to remain somewhere they're not welcome. Related, could you share some of your contributions to your country? Perhaps they can do the same, if you illuminate the opportunity?
How many people out there really keep working on the weekends voluntarily as the author seems to suggest? I'm pretty clear with my coworkers/boss that the only time I'm going to work after-hours or weekends is in case of rare, extreme emergency. There's no expectation that I work weekends, so I'm definitely not going to do it voluntarily. I like programming and like learning new things so I often do work on a side-project of some sort, but that's firmly my time, not my employer's.
See - we have idiots on both sides :)
Can't wait for the Facebook Department of Truth™ to inform me!
Just in case...what?
> You need a hammock to solve hard problems

Tangentially related to this point (less so the section itself) is the benefit of a comfortable working environment. Personally, i have found that a curved chaise is the absolute peak of laptop coding comfort, especially for late night sessions.

If you have space and are in the market for some new furniture, i would urge people to give them a try.
If people wished to be represented, they would have voted.
Forget about the environment! Being hit by an SUV instead of a mid-sized sedan increases your risk of death by over 50%, even if the SUV has no cargo in it and the driver is commuting, alone, to work.

Choosing SUVs and trucks and other oversize vehicles that are bigger than your actual use case calls for also violently inflicts greater risk of death and injury upon other road users at no benefit to you.

This is because doubling the weight of two cars in a collision does not make either driver safer; it's a zero sum game. (It's also because bigger vehicles reduce visibility for everyone else.)

It also indirectly creates more congestion -- the vehicles have to fit on the road, slowing maneuvers at intersections and making it less feasible for jurisdictions to manage traffic by repainting N lane roads as N+M lane roads with narrower lanes.

I'm all for getting a large vehicle if you actually use it to haul, but I get angry[1] whenever I see people driving around massive brand new pickup trucks with totally empty beds, two rows of seats, and all the luxury passenger-oriented option as a "lifestyle choice" because it "looks cool" to their buddies. It's essentially a sedan with a bunch of wasted weight and horsepower that fulfills the same goal a T-shirt reading "I'm a real man who needs a truck" would fulfill.

Some references:

http://www.accessmagazine.org/articles/fall-2014/pounds-kill...
http://www.accessmagazine.org/articles/fall-2002/suvs-really...
http://www.accessmagazine.org/articles/fall-2012/slower-road...

[1] Although I temper my anger with a grain of salt since maybe they do use the bed, just not this time. My anger is against the general trend, not any individual. Still, two rows of seats in a pickup truck is usually the tipoff that the owner primarily uses the vehicle like a sedan. And when I do see stuff in the bed, it's rarely something that wouldn't have fit in a station wagon or minivan. It's just so rare to see someone actually using a pickup truck to haul the kind of weight that kind of horsepower is made for...
> Do you remember the Obama presidency?

ftfy
I'd just make my own uninitialized type in Go. In fact, I think I've done it. I'd guess you'd want to avoid the boilerplate.
I'm almost certain it was mass flagged and removed automatically.
As an Immigrant, the list depresses me. It is evident that the person who came up with the list does not consider immigrants as people.
Ha, no worries, life is more important than arguing on the internet :)
checkout bloomberg's 5 things you need to know today, you can sign up via email
Right, and it's not because Trump is a republican. That's what people keep missing. Trump is a man who has openly incited violence against ethnic groups! Called for the deportation of muslims. He's called women fat pigs, and boasts about how he screws people in business. He boasts about avoiding taxes! This isn't GW, or McCaine...

Most organizations have a very understandable right to not want to be associated with that. It's called a PR disaster. Somehow Trump is immune, and I will never know how.
Why? Trump would have still won the election based on popular vote [1].

[1] - https://g.co/kgs/OmRyz7
The GSA[0] actually administers .gov domains, and I can only assume that with all of Obama's modernizing of Government that they've started to like him a little bit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Services_Administratio...
Facebook isn't the problem. It's a function of its users. It is as much responsible for misinformation as a city park is responsible for the crazy guy shouting about the lizard people. The problem is all the users who actually believe anything they read via facebook.
The metabolic pathway for table sugar and HFCS is not significantly different. We have an enzyme specifically designed to liberate the fructose from sucrose, and it acts at the same location --- the small intestine, which is the start of the pathway from your alimentary canal to the liver, where all fructose (whether it came from sucrose or from HFCS) is metabolized.
Are you one of those people who only believe in democracy when your side wins?
I've found this is a culture that's easily visible before hiring—perhaps people who value work/life balance avoid it.
Admiting to fight misinformation amounts to the same as admiting that they will pursue a left-wing bias.
Given the trend towards multinational unions, such as the European Union andvits Euro currency, I think "devolve" is the right description of this idea. I think this is a terrible idea. I believe we are moving gradually towards a world government via an emergence pathway.

Though I would not be at all surprised if current politics lead to an attempt to secede, as such talk has increased in recent months: http://fortune.com/2016/07/25/us-state-secession-brexit-elec...

Alaska seems the most likely candidate for a serious attempt and potentially viable position. Alaska is radically different from the rest of the US and my understanding is its oil is a big deal, financially speaking.
If people are worried about a Donald Trump presidency because they're afraid he'll break norms, tear down established systems, and use his elected status to remove any independent/non-populist institution, it is not a good idea to start with this.
If you haven't read them I really reccomend his small fates or fait divers that he has written: http://www.tejucole.com/other-words/small-fates or here: http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/dtake/i-dont-normally-do-this...
At a high level, compilers just translate one programming language to another. A key part of this translation is the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST), which represents the programming language transformed into a tree of computation independent of the syntax of the language. Once you have the AST, you can then step through it and translate the tree to anther language like java bytecode, ASM, CIL, etc.

When compiling the AST sits in the middle of the whole process. The first part deals with parsing your language into the AST the second part deals with transforming the AST to the target language (including possible optimizations of the tree).

Lisp is effectively the raw AST, which is where its power comes from. The use of parentheses is the cleanest way to directly represent a raw tree that you can interact with. This means that you can use Lisp to cut the language design process in half from either direction:

On the one hand, if you are worried about parsing your language, then you can simply transform it into lisp, which is virtually identical to creating the AST, and then you can use a lisp interpreter/compiler for the second half.

On the other hand, if you're interested in writing the interpreter/compiler for a language and don't want to stress about parsing, you can write it for lisp and not have to worry about parsing a complex language. If you follow the Norvig code you can extend that example to a language devoid of parenthesis by writing the parser for it.

Even if you want to do both it's not a terrible idea to prototype both halves using Lisp and then perform the minimal work pull out the Lisp code and replace it with some other implementation of the AST.
I don't even want a hammock or chair—just a quiet room would be a good start.
I created a womens ecommerce site with some friends, took $1M in VC, grew it to several million in revenue per year, then the business fell apart when we realized scaling would not solve our net income issues. Online womens fashion is a hard nut to crack. I'm not surprised to see Nasty Girl file for bankruptcy. I am surprised that someone can put out 2 books about success and not be successful themselves.
This is a programming competition that was built by two high school interns at Two Sigma over the summer. We had so much fun playing it that we decided to open it up to the public. Have fun!

You need to click through the rankings to see the game in action, so here's a quick link to a recent one: https://halite.io/game.php?replay=ar1478809038-259229998.hlt
Like via transpilation or what? LLVM would be a more natural choice if looking to compile to native.
Still, perhaps why I was never attracted to Law.
I have personally asked an individual why they don't trust snopes.

Their claim is that it's a Democrat rag towel and shill.

I then ask, then what fact-checker would you trust?

Their response: None of them.

Congratulations. We've reached a point, for this individual, where "facts" as decided in the common forum are suspect and the only thing they trust is themselves (and whatever non-Mainstream Media they listen to). We have reached a point where the only truth is what they decide is the truth.

That is a non-trivial problem to resolve. If we can't even agree what basic facts are, there is no way to even have a discussion.
If strongertogether.gov were going to be the Clinton campaign's transition website, they didn't use SSL certificates from a registrar using a Certificate Transparency server that Google indexes.

Hard to tell from CT logs if there was another website for a Clinton transition-- the existing search tools for CT logs aren't great (best I could do was to get a list of all unexpired *.gov certificates logged, which isn't helpful).
The 'Download video' option under 'My Dad' hit me hard
Yeah if that video actually existed it would have destroyed him in the primaries stage.
That's a good point I hadn't considered before: if somebody is unwilling to stay and press for positive change in their own country...what exactly do they offer to a new host country?

Fair-weather citizens aren't much of an asset.
> imposes a huge cost on a species, and that cost is called “males.”

Incidentally, the cost of males is only a 50% overhead when the males contribute nothing to raising the offspring. In some species, the energetic/resource cost is dominated by caring/feeding/raising long after birth, which males may contribute to as much as females.
So you make it so the states and counties and cities and voting districts that want to use a different process for their elections don't have to use the federal machines for anything but federal votes, but you still allow the federal machines to be used for down-ballot processes.
Or, just as easily, they are trying to signal value to their perceived tribe and just want to validate themselves with the group.
Most companies pay poorly.

If you are in the higher range of salary, you gotta find out which local employers/industries are worth talking to and limit your application to them. There probably aren't many.
Was going to post something similar myself. No offense, but a lot of my liberal-leaning colleagues/friends/HN users sound like whinier Republicans when Democrats were in power.

Progress used to be made in the US through compromise. I want one thing, another person wants another, we sit down and bash out what's acceptable to both of us and the country is the better for that negotiation.

There are Trump policies that I will fight possibly to my death should they ever be attempted, but there are also a non-zero number I think might be good for this country.

As micaksica suggested, hackers act on the world they have, not on the world they wish existed.
Yes, Dec 01, 2015 10:50 AM (assuming that was your question).
Probably solvable. Here's one solution that would only require registration of write-ins (which many states already do).

Issue everyone a secret key (the digital equivalent of a ballot). They publish hash($key, $name). There are only N values for $name so that can be solved in O(N) time, but without knowledge of $key you couldn't determine whom someone voted for. For the sake of the user you could even pre-compute the hash values so it literally becomes "publish this string to vote for X".

You could authenticate the user by having them give their pubkey at their secretary of state. The pubkey signs the hash like a standard blockchain transaction.
4. Enums. My god, Enums. Such a simple feature, but so insanely welcome and useful in Rust.

Enums are so underrated. So many architecture problems introduced by bad coders in Smalltalk would have been entirely avoided with Swift style enums.
There are plenty of sound arguments for electronic voting. The perfect system would be way more trustworthy than backroom hand counting by party insiders where the only metric to try to avoid corruption is to have two parties counting at the same time.

Just black box stand alone machines that are networked together with no outside scrutiny while popping out a magical final number is completely unreasonable.
I really can't see this happening. There's no precedent and it would lead to serious civil unrest.
Of course; anything that could generate input could have been used to transmit information, if slowly. Could have used Morse Code, baudot, etc as well.

Note packet radio has been around since the mid-70s, too.
I am not being clear. Why live in an NZ city of 200,000 when you could live in an American one of the same size and enjoy a lower cost of living, and cheaper rent?