skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Too early to tell if less/same/more carcinogenic

Absolutely not. There is a substantial body of evidence showing that e-cigarette vapor is vastly less carcinogenic than tobacco smoke if the coil temperature is kept below ~220°C. Fortunately, the market is now awash with devices that have accurate temperature control.

The issue of diacetyl was potentially significant, but is now mostly fixed. Reputable manufacturers are aware of the toxicity of diacetyl and have overwhelmingly removed it from their products. Diacetyl is expected to disappear completely from e-cigarette products under the new regulatory regimes in the US and the EU. Cigarette smoke contains far greater concentrations of diacetyl than even the worst e-cigarette products tested.

This announcement by the FDA shows a clear intention to transition current smokers from combustible cigarettes to alternative nicotine delivery systems; this reflects the overwhelming body of evidence for the greatly reduced harms associated with e-cigarettes.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5377270/

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1438463916...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tox.20153/abstrac...
https://academic.oup.com/ntr/article-abstract/17/2/168/28580...
Sexual Harassment and More at The Flex Company (YC S16)
Build up, not out.

Easy solution.
Vice: Go channels across many machines
I'm selling a house right now. We listed at 15% more than we wanted, factoring in the realtor fees and room to give the buyer some negotiation (not being in a super hot market). In both selling that house and buying the new one, almost all companies involved (appraisers, realtors, inspectors) were close to useless (with the exception of the title companies, who did the actual legal stuff off the transaction). There is massive room for disruption in the industry, but also massive inertia.
> when we're (say) half way there, the amount of societal upheaval will be enormous.

I had a conversation with a C level exec of a large company last week around this theme. My suggestion that limited AI such as self driving cars has the potential to create a vast number of extremely frustrated individuals making a second round of 'Sabotage' and Luddites a definite possibility was waved away as if those people don't matter and don't have any power.

I really wonder how far you'd have to be removed from the life of a truck or cab driver not to be able to empathize with them and to realize that if you take away some of the last low education jobs that allow you to keep your hands clean that there will be some kind of backlash.

AGI will expand that feeling to all of us.
Yup. My 1987 Toyota pickup contains no digital computer whatsoever. It's so mechanically simple. I'm pretty sure I could do or have done any major repair (e.g., full transmission replacement, major engine overhaul) for less money than the cost to replace a just-out-of-warranty computer module in a newer vehicle. I realize that computers enable better fuel efficiency, but I just don't see how all that added complexity is worth it in a gasoline-powered vehicle. I'll willingly part with it only when all-electric becomes economically viable.
Why would this be interesting? Are you suggesting Bezos has an editorial influence at WP?
> seems that I need to learn how to write lists...

insert an empty line between each bullet point.

First without an empty line:

* bullet point without empty line between each other
* bullet point without empty line between each other

then with an empty line inserted in between:

* bullet point with an empty line between each other

* bullet point with an empty line between each other
Personally I think it's absolutely important for some people to be working on AGI and other to be working on practical applications. Trying to push the boundaries teaches you a lot about what tools you still need. Researching narrow applications hones our experience with the techniques we already understand well and gives us new tools
I do think competitors are catching up with shipping. I honestly find the reviews helpful. I could be completely wrong but the reviews on amazon seem superior to most other e-commerce sites. I could read the reviews and buy somewhere else but I rarely do that.
Why wouldn't phasing it out across 10 to 15 year period to mitigate the effects, not take care of the bulk of the problem?

If we'd begun a phase out in 2000, during the height of the tech boom, then by now Prop 13 would be gone and the housing situation would be much different.
I think the hyped euphemisms are carefully crafted to make the people feel important if they buy something. It's a very regular psychological technique in marketing.
Valid points. The project is not production ready yet. One of the main devs has a good explaination of his tweet stating:

>"Ethereum isn't safe or scalable. It is immature experimental tech. Don't rely on it for mission critical apps unless absolutely necessary!"

https://medium.com/@Vlad_Zamfir/about-my-tweet-from-yesterda...
I support research funding at all levels, and have nothing against mostly theoretical research, but is it really the best use of resources to throw $1 billion at reinforcement learning without any similar investments into addressing mass unemployment and wealth inequality (both of which are well-documented to cause political instability), how existing gender and racial biases are being encoded in our algorithms, and on how to best get this technology into the hands of people working on high impact areas like medicine and agriculture around the world?

Not quite my field, but perhaps such currently intractable, high-impact societal and medical problems do require theoretical breakthroughs after all... I guess I'm just concerned Rachel that --to put it in reinforcement learning terms-- we need both exploration and exploitation.
I always try to run a web version of this stuff. Web music player, web Slack, etc. Don't need more garbage on my machine, and since it's essentially a bundle of Chrome, it's good enough to just use it in the browser - where it belongs.
AFAIK they don't. Firefox phones home to mozilla and according to this comment has about 20 default settings phoning home to google[1].

But my point was simply about directing users' searchs to google search engine, which is enough to expose yourself to google.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14809837
Separate AWS account with write-only permission to backup S3 objects from production pushed out to the backup account. Enable versioning and glacier in backup account. Lock down backup account credentials appropriately. (And add alerting and periodic fire drills of course.)
When a Criminal gets arrested or charged through the data of an robot vacuum, I'm going to eat my own hair.
I believe it is unfair (and unwise?) to throw in modifiers such as "very long-term" in the quoted sentence, or "very distant" in:

> It is hard for me to empathize with Musk’s fixation on evil super-intelligent AGI killer robots in a very distant future.

The truth is we don't know, (we can't know,) and we (on the whole) are making enormous strides. And it could take one small breakthrough to find ourselves "very" suddenly on the precipice of AGI and evil super-intelligent killer robots. Dismissing the current state of progress as trying to beat Atari is silly.

I, for one, am glad that some people with the resources are taking some efforts to get ahead of that "evil" aspect. But I don't see this as an "us" vs "them" scenario: it's also great that there are people helping make neural net algorithms more accessible.
This feature was never useful. Not to mention wasted bandwidth. Glad it's dead. Just give me simplicity.
TheShadowBrokers likely former NSA contractor
I think it is able to store up to 2GB of music. And I just saw this for Spotify -- https://snowy.rocks
@bartread That's an awfully high and mighty opinion, don't you think? Sounds like annoyance over the fact that things that work reliably aren't "cool" enough.
Successful product first, open standards second, rich ecosystem third.
My thoughts on the Flash EoL, including bits about legacy code
We also do research and try to move the state of the art. Although we share our results and methods largely through courses rather than academic papers.

Our plan is to teach more material each year, in less time, with less prerequisites, by both curating the best practice techniques and adding our own.

So far we've spent much more time on education than research since that's the highest leverage activity right now (helping create more world class practitioners helps move the field forward). And most of the research is more curation and meta-analysis to figure out what really works in practice.
Why is a connected light better than a simple motion activated one?
Learned a lot from the pragmaticstudio resource as well and couldn't recommend it highly enough.
So your parents never yelled at you about leaving the lights on when you were a kid?

And you never yell at anyone you know about doing the same?
Certificate Transparency: Hacking web applications before they are installed
Even rails doesn't ship with an auth module though. Lots of people use Devise and there is an equivalent for Elixir (Coherence)...but shipping with auth built in is an exploit waiting to happen IMO.
"Anyone know a better alternative to my car but cheaper?"

Excuse the car analogy. You need to tell us what cloud hosting requirements you have. Some people need 1 CPU with 1GB RAM, others run an enterprise with 1000s of virtual machines and petabyte of storage.
Here is what's on the horizon: https://dev-blog.apollodata.com/new-features-in-graphql-batc...

Subscriptions already exist: https://dev-blog.apollodata.com/graphql-subscriptions-in-apo...
Nitpick: Hydrometers measure the specific gravity of liquids and are mostly used for beverages such as to calculate a liquid's sugar or alcohol contents.

You're thinking of hygrometers, which measure relative humidity using capacitive, resistive, or gravimetric methods.
Well if this service were called horseradish I would definitely sign up.
> Why do Walmart, Google, Oracle and UPS all consider Amazon their biggest threat?

Is this true? For some of them (Walmart) I guess I wouldn't be surprised, but I'm still curious where this information comes from. Is it guesswork on the part of the author, or is it based on off the record discussions with the leadership of those companies, or something else?
https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com
To be fair, the Ethereum author sold shares in his quantum computer Bitcoin miner before starting his own coin. Security was likely not the primary design objective.

That the language was like javascript was one of the selling points (in a very real sense, as there was a lot to be sold before the software could be released).
At what point is something anti-competitive?

Facebook cloning snap features? They are dominant in social media, should they be allowed to do that?

Google and their ad blocker plans?

Being willing and able to lose money for a few years to drive a startup out of a new market?
Absolutely! We'd like to see investment in both. Currently we're just not seeing the investment we think there ought to be in the areas Rachel mentioned, or in application areas around food production, education, medicine, and so forth.
I tend to think of "magic" as meaning fragile, indirect coupling; for example "magic numbers" at the start of files, which are only meaningful if the consuming application has a corresponding pattern in its database.

Or sets of things which only work if given in a particular order. Or unrelated functionalities which interfere with each other due to implementation details. And so on.

In other words, leaky abstractions where thinking in terms of the concept has so many edge cases that it's easier to think in terms of the implementation instead. Or conventions which can only be used via memorisation, trial and error, stack overflow and reading the source (often this is due to shoehorning things into language models which aren't amenable; e.g. all of the things aspect oriented programming tries to do)
Plataforma de Marketing Digital E Email Marketing (Lead Lovers)
In my old house, not a single light switch is where you'd expect it to be, and a number of the rooms are byways between other rooms.

So being able to turn the light on when you walked in was no guarantee you'd be able to do the same when you walked out again.
Their search is pretty terrible. Everything else (the ordering process, delivery options, delivery time, returns system, etc.) is pretty fantastic. From my phone, I can order, say, another batch of my favourite kitchen towel brand in about 5 seconds. It will be in my hallway the next day. I don't know of anyone else that does that.

Amazon is scary in that way, because the ease of which you can magically manifest goods through its app means it becomes ingrained your routine, even to the point where you're itching to order something, even if you don't need it. They've really nailed the worst of consumerist culture, too.

It's also scary in the sense that they're slowly becoming the source of everything I buy. Whether I want household stuff, electronics, a suitcase, some hardware tool -- I invariably reach for Amazon unless it's something I know that Amazon doesn't have. (Amazon is still pretty useless for high-end, quality home decor and furniture, for example.)

As for the search, I suspect it works fine from Amazon's point of view. It's designed to offer you products that Amazon thinks you will buy, not what you searched for, and it tries very hard not to return "no results found". It is very frustrating for "power users", though.
The shock will be from electricity prices, not weather itself. San Diego heat is nothing. Houston and most of the rest of the south are unlivable without constant dehumidification (AC).

Currently they exist with really cheap energy. But what if carbon is taxed or exports of Nat gas become more preferable than domestic consumption?

With cheap energy, they can always just Add More AC™. Public places in Houston are kept at 68F in July. Look at Dubai where it's even hotter.
> Suppose there was a company that publicly stated that it would never give out dividends, but it was making bank. People like yourself would assume at some point in the future dividends would be paid out

Why would we do that?
I'm working on a book for programmers who want to learn math. I can send you the first few chapters if you're interested, but I'm also interested to hear your thoughts about math in general.
Another great resource that was recently released is the Phoenix Inside Out series by Shankar: https://shankardevy.com/phoenix-book/

I just got it a few days ago and I'm about 30% into the first book. What I can say so far is that the author's approach resonates really well with me. Going through the book feels like sitting next to a colleague, who is introducing you to Phoenix and is really knowledgeable in the topic. The book is full of interesting tidbits and explanations about Phoenix internals without getting in the way. I also appreciate the TDD approach including both acceptance and unit testing. The most important thing for me though, is how Shankar condensed teaching Elixir into a single chapter. I have previously tried to study Elixir a few times with the intention of eventually getting into Phoenix but I always got overwhelmed by the OTP material. I didn't want to make the mistake of trying to learn Rails before being comfortable with Ruby again so I put off on learning Phoenix altogether. What Shankar has done is to dedicate one chapter to teach just enough Elixir for you to get started. This was perfect for what I needed and it was reassuring knowing exactly how much (or little) Elixir you need to know before diving into Phoenix.

If you have previous experience in another MVC framework and are interested in Phoenix I highly recommend this series (at least based on what I've read so far).

I should note that the current version of the book is targeting Phoenix v1.3.0-rc.2. Although Shankar has already made an announcement with the intention to update the book soon after the officially 1.3.0 release.
Is there even real competition, though? Doesn't the US already have the military power of the 6 following nations combined, or something like that?
Actually, I'm a PNW native, my parents were, their parents were, ... My dad lost his job as part of the big Boeing bust of 1971 (where the "will the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights" sign came from!). Seattle as ALWAYS been a boom and bust town way before I was born.

We always exaggerated the rain and the people just kept coming. So there must be something else going on.
How? It's entirely possible to decriminalize and simply move law enforcement monies to other efforts, leaving nothing for health services.
other than dividends there's usually

1. rights to vote in the board
2. some claims on the company's assets in case of bankruptcy
It just seems like what we have to do in this new world :p. Hey, at least we now have an excuse to know our neighbors, or at least be nice to the concierge if your building has one.
They also already have a contract with Bing for search.
Does anyone else feel this is opertunistic? While I appreciate the online course, why start firing shots at another non-profit? Seems the only realistic answer is to drum up attention.

> One significant difference is that fast.ai has not been funded with $1 billion from Elon Musk to create an elite team of researchers with PhDs from the most impressive schools who publish in the most elite journals. OpenAI, however, has.
As far as i understand it, you dont have be math wiz, but have good grasp of the more common statistical analysis, regression etc..
That there aren't many commonly used profiles only makes it easier to ship the few that are used. I guess that 'whatever Libreffice used before' and 'Excel' would cover 90+% of demand.

There even is a precedent: Word used to (maybe still does) ship with optional keybindings for WordPerfect compatibility. I also vaguely remember excel having a set of Lotus-123 keybindings.
Hacking into every major Silicon Valley campus
https://github.com/smpallen99/ex_admin
Downvoting doesn't mean your post was bad. It just means that it shouldn't be at the top of the thread because it's irrelevant. I downvoted the top post because when opening this thread, I should see actual discussion about the article before seeing "why was this upvoted?".
If self driving cars/trucks become a thing, and cause millions of people to be unemployed, there is ALSO a correspondingly massive economy increase.

IE, the world is now massively richer because of all this awesome new technology.

Yes, there could be some short term disruption, but honestly I think things will end up fine, just because of the massive amount of extra money and wealth that the world will have that could be used to solve all those short term problems that disruption causes.
No need to travel, watch the whole event live from the comfort of your own device: http://eclipse.stream.live/
You might want to add that all those book links have an Amazon referral link attached which (presumably?) points to you.
I feel like my BA degree has been mostly wasted (because it is an "unknown quantity" that has not a lot of worth on its own) so I am willing to take 4 years in CS since it's going so well for most people that did. Maybe I can even skip some general ed classes so I can graduate sooner. At least I will be able to understand some programming assignments much better. I think my biggest challenges will be in the math classes I missed (Calculus II and III, differential equations, etc.)

Being self-taught, I have started to feel trapped, hard to do anything outside of web development or mobile apps. My subpar network also limits that selection of jobs even more. Unlike most programmers that have gotten more experience, I did not earn the luxury of being picky with jobs. A lot of people also recommended that I get a CS degree if I want to work in something way outside the mainstream web jobs (my aerospace interest for example).

There's also the ironic advantage that new graduates have in the job market- they are held to less strict hiring standards by large companies, and generally speaking, their school experiences have more similarities. As someone that is mid-level, I felt a strangeness in some companies I apply to. That happens when a company holds all mid-level programmers to the same standards, even though the patterns of what mid-level programmers experienced (and the knowledge they missed) varies much more greatly than the patterns of new grads.

I see a return to college as a second chance in having a prosperous life where I like doing what I work and have less to worry about my company keeping me in good hands.
Cigarette companies have been tinkering with nicotine levels for decades. The available evidence suggests that while smokers may alter their smoking behaviour to some extent (taking longer and deeper puffs), their overall cigarette consumption does not significantly change.

As stated in the announcement, this decision is in the context of the widespread availability of reduced-harm nicotine delivery devices, namely e-cigarettes. Reducing nicotine levels in conventional cigarettes is hoped to push existing smokers towards e-cigarettes, whilst reducing the appeal and the addictive potential of cigarettes to young people.

I would hope that this decision will be backed up by pilot studies and long-term surveillance, but it seems quite reasonable prima facie.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25277253
> It is hard for me to empathize with Musk’s fixation on evil super-intelligent AGI killer robots in a very distant future.

I would argue this person has no business working with AI with this sort of myopic thinking.

If you think "fake news" is a problem now, just wait until decentralized AI networks are able to tweet, publish articles and affect public discourse in a way that is indistinguishable from human influence. This AI could be trained such that it pushes targeted propaganda and is able to destroy the lives of dissidents using a variety of tactics (generation of fake audio and video material that is indistinguishable from real life targets for the purpose of slander [1][2] as well as other techniques like DDOS, hacking, etc).

Now imagine a world in which all devices are connected in an "Internet of Things" and AI becomes sophisticated enough to exploit these networks and turn them against humans. This has wide ranging implications from surveillance to killing people by hijacking the computer systems in cars to even taking control of military weapon systems that can be used to control and oppress humans.

Now take all of that functionality and embed it within an actual robot that can move around in the real world and is physically stronger than humans [3].

There is nothing that can be done about this because non-proliferation treaties are impossible to enforce due to the nature of software. AI is going to lead to the extinction of all human life on this planet and this is coming from someone who generally disregards conspiracy theories as paranoid fear mongering. We have every reason to be afraid.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/adobe...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15957844/ai-fake-video-au...

[3] http://mashable.com/2014/01/12/robotic-muscle/
Anecdotally, when I proposed to some Google product managers that Amazon was their biggest competitor (if not threat) in my opinion, they looked at me as though I was out of my mind. They really could not see much of a connection at all. Perhaps because they worked in groups like Android etc. not the advertising group, but it was still a suprising attitude to me.