skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Examples of top-down algorithms, in my opinion (since bottom-up and top-down are debatable concepts in many concrete situations), include:

- Genetic algorithms

- Q learning

In the sense that they learn general behavior first and then learn ever more little "tricks" to be used in particular situations. Both are more effective when combined with ANNs. But when they start they're only aware of very high level goals.

That said, I also have kids, and while they're bigger now, I would argue the idea that humans work top-down from the very beginning doesn't survive caring for a toddler for a few hours (babies can't really move, so they don't make particularly stupid decisions. Toddlers and up to teenagers make idiotic decisions that make sense from particular perspectives. For instance, they exhibit extreme short term decision making (like taking a huge risk of falling down just to get a little piece of candy).

Top-down decision making isn't just something that is eventual emergent behavior, it's learned behavior. Telling a toddler that to get candy he should go to the store, get flour, sugar and ... and follow this recipe doesn't work. They get distracted after 30 seconds. It's not that they're trying to fail, their mind just doesn't let them focus beyond a certain (short) amount of time. Adults have the same limit, just longer time, but they have learned to compensate for it. For instance using TODO lists, or project plans.
How secure is using Maven?
Stupid idea IMHO. PHP is great BECAUSE it organic growth. It fully exposes the incorporated libraries with the same naming convention of the library functions and often additionally also in ObjectOriented style.

Have a look how green field planned ObjectOriented Namespaces in Java and dotNet Framework 1-4 turned out. Java's String vs StringBuilder vs StringBuffer, Java's deprecated Date and Time classes, the whole "old" dotNet Framework has been deprecated for a slightly incompatible new dotNet Core namespace and several namespace parts got deprecated long before, some got useless with the move to asynchronous programming (something C/C++ based WinAPI supported since 1994), etc.

What history showed us that monolithic namespaces designed by committee doesn't work out that well, an organic growth may look ugly to you but is easier to remember and quite sympathetic - I for one like PHP also because of that. JavaScript, C99, C++11, have a similar long term history.

Also PHP is so great because of it best of class documentation on PHP.net - no other language has such an extensive docu (and for so many years) incl useful comments on every page. JavaDoc, MSDN, MozillaWiki, etc are unfortunately worse in every regard. (MDN is catching up; and even W3School is quite handy)
And this is why we'll never have meaningful police accountability and reform. Even being caught in the act, on video, of planting evidence someone will create an excuse for why what they did wasn't wrong. Sickening.
Are you sure? If you lose privacy, that sucks but it reverts back to bitcoin of today. If you lose inflation guarantees, then it doesn't matter if you have privacy because the whole system becomes worthless.
at least "What is the European Union?" when voting for brexit would be enough.
At least it was clear that it was clickbait before even clicking it. But yeah that is a cynical article that is really scraping for an angle.
Software Package Data Exchange Licenses
This reminds me of a literary test to vote. In this case it's: "Here's our news story. Answer some questions to be sure you understand OUR point of view, the words and ideas WE want you to acquiesce, in order to express your so-called opinion." Ungood.
love it, live on it, its contributed significantly to my hearing loss. listening to https://soundcloud.com/silent-season/campfire-stories-24 as i type this spiel.

would happily become a premium++ subscriber if money went to artists, something like humble bundle... but the paid plan is brain dead and offers no value ┐(￣ヘ￣;)┌

hope it survives or morphs into a decentralised platform that artists can thrive on.
AutoIT FF Automation
The new UI for Firefox 57 is still written in XUL. It's just the XUL extension API that is being deprecated in favor of WebExtensions with Firefox 57.

This deprecation of XUL extensions could prove problematic for Thunderbird, as it means that Mozilla can now move a lot faster and make breaking changes without having to worry about mass-breakages in extensions, therefore making it more likely that they'll leave Thunderbird behind at some point, but XUL itself isn't yet being deprecated.

There are some long-long-term plans to maybe eventually replace XUL with HTML/CSS/JS, but they need much better performance still before that becomes viable. There are some efforts into that direction already[0], building a framework for it as well, and those mostly focus around Servo, as that will have the necessary performance, so I'd guess at least a couple of years still.

[0]https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml
Apple didn't invent the app store and weren't many mobile phones before the iPhone (running J2ME or whatever) even more restrictive?

Also, Android doesn't restrict side-loading in this way so I disagree that restricting side-loading is an essential feature of an app store as commonly understood.
I agree with you on all your critiques.

There may be sufficient market for S3-using companies that mostly use storage (sufficient API overlap and much lower costs).

But the prices are so low you also grab another category: young companies that want a migration path to S3 but cannot afford it so well yet.

And there's business models that'd only work with cheap enough storage - and Wasabi's price is very low indeed.
With PHP you also need to implement a webserver (Apache), so you're one-liner is also actually not a one-liner at all.

Also, pick the right tool for the right job. Who writes code these days that silently sit still for a decade? Hardly anyone. And even if you do, I don't think Python or Node will suddenly stop working (as you're implying).
Did you even check the downloads page? Theres rpm and dep packages: https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/releases
Would you feel better if he said, "We, the rich, ..."?
Amazon is so big that it's hard to imagine it failing, rather than you failing.

But you can not have Backblaze and Wasabi at a price point that is less than half of S3. Not sure about this Glacier stuff.
That's the headline. It's not clear that Gore said that. An actual quote is.

> “I mean that those with access to large amounts of money and raw power,” says Gore, “have been able to subvert all reason and fact in collective decision making”

In any case, it's clear that he's not talking about all the rich.
And vice versa. Only they are probably less aware of it than we are. But we're predators, there is not much doubt about that.
Check out the giant Panda like Solar Farm built by China
Or maybe that qualifies him? Knowing a lot of other 1%ers and how they tick?
Like 3 years ago I proposed a Nodejs implementation based on Gecko instead of V8. Two Mozilla devs mentioned they don't care and see no need. In the meantime even MS is trying with their Chakra.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbLK4RZDdzI
> It seems like they are suggesting that it's feasible to make fiber optics which transmit a picture with extremely low distortion. So a single fiber could carry an optical image instead of a serial bit stream while maintaining nearly perfect clarity.

If this is the case, it could be useful in many fiber array imaging applications, not just data transmission. Endoscopy, special cameras like Huygens' DISR etc.
> Especially, if someone just starts with NNs.

That goes for any new field you are interested in. If this bothers you I have a suggestion: pretend the present does not exist and go back to the beginnings of the field, then do a 'faster than realtime' replay to allow you to see the steps as they were made in the past until you catch up with the present. Typically this will take you anywhere from 1 to 5 years depending on how fast you work for something complex but you'll come away with a much deeper level of understanding than you'd get if you just looked at what is being done today.

It will also help you to not go down all the blind alleys of history because you are now aware of them.
The same confusion is going on in the German language. Instead of next, 'nächsten' the confusion is tried to be solved using 'diesen' (this), 'kommenden' (upcoming) or 'nächsten' (next) causing its own set of ambiguities.
Except for the 'wear' part, or use while wearing, or software and applications. But--small battery-powered computer usable in class with slightly more hacker aplomb than a cellphone with BT keyboard: Check.

It'll be interesting to see if anything more comes of this--the easy part is done. Personally, I would have at least opted for a one-hand chordic keyboard and a display you can use while walking.
reminds me on the histograms in R. E.g. http://www.r-tutor.com/elementary-statistics/quantitative-da... They also don't cross and I felt it's aesthetically pleasing in that case ... yet for all plots I agree with you.
Trying to be a Naive Entrepreneur again
The Energy Problem of the RNA World Hypothesis
Evaluating the veracity of their claims is way above my pay grade.

They do have a PDF on their site: http://marketing.idquantique.com/acton/attachment/11868/f-00...

Basically, emit photons at a semi-transparent mirror. 50% go straight, 50% reflect 90 degrees. Have single-photon detectors at both directions. Quoting from their PDF:

Figure 2 shows the block diagram of the Quantis random number generator. It consists of three subsystems. The first one is the core of the generator and contains the optical elements that are used to implement the random process and produce the random outcomes. It comprises a light emitting diode producing the photons, a transmission element, where the random process takes place, and two single-photon detectors – detectors with single-photon resolution – to record the outcomes. The optical subsystem is controlled by a synchronization and acquisition electronic circuit. This subsystem comprises a clock and triggering electronics for the photon source, as well the acquisition electronics for the single-photon detectors. The processing and interfacing subsystem perform statistical and hardware checks, as well as unbiasing of the sequence.

Edit: the ID Quantique hardware is a bit pricey for hobbyists, starting at about 1000 euros.

If I were building something for myself, I'd look here for inspiration: https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/ That hardware detects beta decay events.

That's preferable to me than "avalanche noise". Not that there's anything fundamentally wrong with thermal noise or shot noise; it's that in real implementations the quality of results is very dependent on things such as quality of power supply. To me it's much simpler to correctly detect intervals between consecutive radioactive decay events.

The downside to a cheap decay detector is that the number of events is much lower than what the commercial hardware provides. A few hundred bits per second versus a few million bits per second.
Yes, I am the author, thanks! If you have any public site please let me know.

What I mean is that there has been a larger (apparent) impact directly from my project(s) than from the fact that they are in my resume ( https://francisco.io/resume )
MOOCs are not very useful for any kind of science that requires lab access, and Sci-Hub is not very useful for any kind of scholarly material that's not scientific, so I'd say universities are still far from obsolete.
Instead of xor-ing multiple sources of randomness together,
it's preferable to feed them all into a cryptographically secure hash function, like Keccak or Blake2. One of the sources to be added could be the header of a recently published bitcoin block.
An all-in-one JSON logging utility for Node.js
tl;dr PHP has an identity crisis

PHP folks are a perfect case of the blub paradox and they are sadly always looking up. PHP isn't treated with the respect it deserves. PHP powers large parts of the internet, from tiny to huge projects. But there isn't even an attempt to understand what it made/make work so well. PHP is quite different from other languages but instead of curiosity from the competitors, there is just bad reputation and ignorance. The community and language itself constantly leans and evolves towards other languages. Ruby, Java, Javascript and whatever. The shortcomings in contrast to other languages are often drawing much attention in the community and in my opinion is overshadowing PHP's strengthes. Much of the recent changes in PHP have been a kind of fanservice to appeal the users of other languages. While this isn't particularly a wrong strategy to stay around, it caused an addiction to be more similar to the competitors. PHP lost it's identity and got unknowingly angry about it.

This is just my opinion and there are some wrongs here, but thats how I would currently explain the sub par PHP community behaviour.
That's an incredibly stupid answer. It is precisely this kind of thinking that makes me worry about sharing the road with alpha grade self driving hardware. There is real potential for carnage here, at highway speeds it doesn't take that big of a software bug to get a lot of people killed.
Optical illusions come to mind.
I would gladly exchange some speed for built in annotations. Writing code in comments annoys me beyond measure.
From Enlightenment to the Dark Ages: How “new atheism” slid into the alt-right
Prawns with soba noodles and beans
Political arguing about CO2 and warming has been going on for 20 years or so and the atmospheric CO2 levels keep rising. If there is going to be a fix it will probably have a big tech aspect like solar + batteries becoming really cheap.
> "If they want to ship a product with good UI/UX quality, then they should learn the supported languages."

The time sunk in learning a new programming language is not inconsequential. You can get to a basic level of proficiency relatively quickly, but being productive in a language takes time and effort.

If I took your approach I'd constantly need to switch languages and rely on glue logic to piece them together. Just because a language is 'the best' at one thing doesn't mean it's always the right choice for a project that has multiple requirements. Should all regular expressions be written in Perl? Should all mathematical operations be written in Fortran? Should all macros be written in Common Lisp? Should all data structures be described in Idris?
No,I don't want homeless kids from being discouraged from hanging out in the library just because they stink and make rich people uncomfortable. Just because some folks don't acknowledge the dark side of the USA, where is little/no support for your fellow citizens who fall off the train, doesn't mean you can grind them down even more.
Making Bitcoin work better
The title is confusing. Of course an optical lens can transfer digital information without loss. The lenses in my glasses do this all the time.
It works well but it does not always end well. Civil wars have been started in this way.
Haven't read the article yet but back in the 90s/00s there was a thing for using Genetic Algorithms to evolve optimal NN topologies.

Edit: Cool, mentions it right out the gate.
>Is SoundCloud worth a billion dollars? Well, it might be on paper or in the imaginations of the founders, but what does it really mean? To me, it's worth nothing.

I was curious if this was true, so I asked a genie to see if you (as a bootstrapped founder) would trade $20 to own SoundCloud. Well it turns out the genie ran the experiment and concluded that not only is it worth $20 to you, but way more - in the genie's experiment you'd actually trade both $20k and even $200k for SoundCloud!

So I looked at your comment in which you say SoundCloud is worth "nothing" to you, like a bad black and white photocopy of a hundred dollar bill, and the truth is you value it at hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

Logarithmically, your valuation (10^5.3, which is all the genie tested up to but for sure you accept) is closer to a billion (10^9) than your stated valuation (10^0 - 1).

So after reading your analysis the billion dollar valuation seems more reasonable than the analysis you offered. (Of course, that does not make it reasonable.)

/s

On a serious note: what I mean is that the next time you make an argument about valuations being "ridiculous", don't be "ridiculous."

EDIT: received several downvotes but I am keeping this.

$0 is not reasonable.
If I remembered correctly, PHPs problem was never speed. All the conference talks back in the days were about how PHP-is-not-the-bottleneck-TM.

Funny thing is that a bit of async Nodejs blow it out the water then, but maybe DBs got faster and PHP couldn't hold up on I/O perf? I don't know.
Definitely NOT making a mobile app with decent UI.

Jokes aside, having to negotiate with tons of artists and their labels/managers, I imagine their legal/business department is significantly bigger than that of most tech startups.
Seems to work for Bandcamp though (which I love by the way).
I heard in a lecture of Blitzscaling with Eric Schmidt that google founders got the Google Chrome and Android projects running inside google without him knowing the real breath and intentions of the projects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcRxFRgNpns
As I remember PHP docs from back in the days, they were mostly crap with the occasional comment that told you how they were crap.
When I read stories like these, I actually feel good about my bootstrapped, down-to-earth startup. We don't make millions, we don't "disrupt" the industry, yet we solve our customers' problems and delight them. We won't ever run out of money, as we carefully check each and every expenditure, and have growing savings in the bank.
When I read stories like these, I actually feel good about my bootstrapped, down-to-earth startup. We don't make millions, we don't "disrupt" the industry, yet we solve our customers' problems and delight them. We won't ever run out of money, as we carefully check each and every expenditure, and have growing savings in the bank.

Then it's not a startup. A startup is designed to grow quickly. Everything we associate with startups stems from the fact that the successful ones do make millions within a decade.

For it to be a startup, you have to have a large target market. That means any competitor that chooses to grow quickly will trounce one that moves slowly.
He said 75% chance, so odds are against you.
Best comment in the thread. It shows that one of SoundCloud's key problem is an oligopolostic industry they are dealing with.
I've also pondered this but I worry that there's a degree of magical thinking here.

Here's one thing too complex for us to understand (a conscious brain).

Here's another thing with superficial similarities (highly complex neural nets of one kind or another).

Maybe this complex thing is the same as this other complex thing!

However - I'm still stuck at the stage where I feel that p-zombies, qualia, the chinese room etc are pointing at a genuine explanatory gap. I know the more rationally minded think this is hand-waving or closet-mysticism but considering nobody has satisfactorily defined consciousness in a way that doesn't simply hide the problem one layer deeper then I'm going to stick to my gut feeling that the other side of the debate is doing just as much hand-waving as me.

It's homculi all the way down.
I got a tester/analyst at work interested in programming and she is now learning Python. I showed how how to set up test cases, parse files, connect to the DB, etc to make her job easier. So I think if you can show someone how it would make their regular job easier, it is more likely to take hold.
People in the US are extremely generous, by any measure.
Youtube is about user uploaded content, and without a content recognition system in place for video and audio and licensing in place with both the movie and music industry they would have been dead in the water, just like SoundCloud. What other revenue streams would they have that would have worked without that?

As the article mentions, SoundCloud eventually did reach an agreement with the music companies, showing that it didn't have to take 10 years, but took longer still than they expected.

So my theory is that the business model is not broken by design as you claim, but that SoundCloud got into the trouble it is now in by poor strategy and decision making.
I'm generally against generalizations ("the rich have subverted ...") as it leads to witchhunt and lynching of the wrong people. However, he convinced me that a wrong balance of powers is keeping us too much in the "status quo" of runaway pollution, using misinformation, and is slowing us down in the fight against massive destruction.

But what can we do?

For example, in French politics, there isn't a single person who proposes the right things against climate change. Melanchon comes to my mind, he has a half program against global warming but does hate speech against the 50% richer of the nation (and in France, that mean earning >2000€ pm). And that doesn't even guarantee getting the global warming solved... Macron won't solve much either, unless he digs in the debt, which isn't better for my children. Either way, we're stuck.
> It's the ground-zero meat space for their content corpus

What do mean with this sentence and content corpus??

That burning man matches their DNA?
How would you easily figure out which version to install? Having a requirement of rsync already installed on the box sounds reasonable, compared to having x86, x64, arm32, arm64, and the rest binaries in the client download...
I think you are right about the musical value in the long tail, but what I was driving at was that the monetary value is concentrated in the 'top', in a power law fashion. Since soundcloud has to pay for its employees and servers it needs money, but most of the ways of actually getting that money will chase away users.

I think a self-hosted soundcloud where people host their own music but use the network for discoverability might be one of the few use cases where decentralization actually makes a lot of sense, because since the users are not (mainly) in it for the money the economies of scale from centralization don't matter as much.
I'm far from a SoundCloud user or a hip hop or rap aficionado, but I'd like to learn more about this. Can you elaborate? Or do you know of a source where I can read about this?
"Not fair, not just? Who said life was fair? Where is there any justice" - Well, if life isn't fair and justice is just a joke, I suppose you would also be fine for those poor, homeless people you snigger and mock at to take violence as a route and murder and rob rich people ? Life is not fair right ? After all you are talking about putting them into labour camps - they can also decide that enough is enough and start a revolution. You might want to realise that you are heavily outnumbered and wouldn't be able to go to work for fear of being murdered.
Yes, but you could argue that WhatsUp is even more impressive because it can be considered much latter stage and aquisition value also reflects that being 19x more than Instagram.
They have. But still, every founder wants to avoid such situations. The founding team's reputation went from sky to hell within few weeks. Not nice and nobody wants to loose their face like this.
Show HN: Yubaba – orchestrated page transitions made easy
Hey!

This library has been an idea of mine for a while now - main goal being having an easy to use api that allows for complex page transitions.

The library currently has React bindings, but Vue and Angular bindings are coming soon.

It's in some ways similar to react-overdrive, but the biggest differences are it's made for any view library, and it's made to be able to support an unlimited amount of animation customisations.

Check it out, give it a star, and let me know your thoughts. A lot more problems to solve - but it's getting there ;-).