skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There is a difference between exaggeration, hype and wilful misleading and AI proponents have long crossed the line.

Now policy makers, and all sorts of busy bodies are contemplating solutions to the 'ai problem' which does not exist and will not exist for some time to come, if it comes.

Pattern matching and image recognition are valuable on their own but passing it off as AI makes a complete mockery of the word and scientific communication.

Engineers and scientists are supposed to be precise and even giving leeway for hype and excitement within the realm of what is possible.
Don't miss the video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAxzR7lMGDM] of his ideas.
Author of the article here.

I find it really interesting you mention this:

>>"when you find yourself violating them, you're supposed to question why"

This is essentially what I see a lot of programmers (including myself) who've internalized these rules tend to do. However I wonder if we've got it backwards - in that, should we be thinking more in terms of about how we design our abstractions upfront and optimize for allowing ourselves enough wiggle room instead of applying the so called "best practices" right away and only stopping to think if something might be wrong when we explicitly violate some of these "best practices" like DRY or small functions or what have you.

I find a lot of us tend to lose sight of the forest for the trees when we focus on cosmetic things like function length. It's a bottom-up view of the abstractions we've built, and maybe we actually need to think about the top-down design more thoroughly?
http://lupa.at

It's a database of roman stone monuments. We have 50000 photos of 27000 stones. The content is collected by two retired archaeologists who travel Europe in their Volkswagen bus driving from museum to museum. After funding for the project dried up, I volunteered to make the new website.

The page is in german, but the pictures speak for themselves. For example, have a look at this query for my favorite mythical hero:
http://lupa.at/queries/691886695
Sometimes if I get a high value package from an unverified source I ask for signature confirmation, wait for the first attempted delivery and pick it up at the PO. I then record myself asking for the package and opening it in front of the postal official.

It's a pain and takes a bit longer but should something happen at least there is a bit of additional evidence.

But it's really just a crude workaround for an inherently trust based system. All that is ever tracked is the package which either the sender or receiver can easily manipulate.
Non-paywalled version go through here: https://twitter.com/fired4truth
The OP has added a correction at the bottom of his Article.
So the set of "people like you" is exclusive of "you"?
He is wearing a shirt that says "goolag" from Google's logo. I love it. One of the better corporate slave names.

Edit: This is more memeish if anything. Google is obviously not comparable to a gulag, its just the closest negative pun.
I haven't glorified being a victim. Quite the contrary. I just refuse to glorify anything the exploits and relies on someone being a victim.

That is, my question is what sick thought made it acceptable to take repression and holding down of full segments of a population under the guise of them individually not standing up for themselves acceptable?

Seriously, the evidence is quite clear that this attitude is complete nonsense and only works for people that have certain advantages already. I get that you feel you have worked hard for your position. So have I. I also get that I was additionally lucky that I was able to reap the rewards of my hard work. Many aren't. And to be ok with that is a truly disgusting collective consciousness problem.
Banning the discussion under the rug will not help.
You're in a pretty good spot if your choice is between Braintree and Stripe.

Some of us are still stuck with stagnant vendors like Beanstream/Bambora/Moneris that seem to have missed the last 15 years of developments in the web space.
We did use to have forums way back in the day, but both ours and many other forums had fallen out of favor for a while and we had shut them down. Forums seem to be making a bit of a come back in some communities so perhaps worth exploring. Thanks for the suggestion and the link.
I think the key new information is this:

> When I first circulated the document about a month ago to our diversity groups and individuals at Google, there was no outcry or charge of misogyny. I engaged in reasoned discussion with some of my peers on these issues, but mostly I was ignored.

Apparently he published the memo about a month ago, and was only fired when it went viral externally.
Upper management tried to placate this surge of outrage by
shaming me and misrepresenting my document, but they
couldn’t really do otherwise: The mob would have set upon
anyone who openly agreed with me or even tolerated my views.
This piece is a huge missed opportunity for Damore. He could have used this chance to reach a wide audience and explain his arguments; instead he goes for a sensationalist tone (and image with the Goolag shirt).
To someone mathy like me, that kinda sucks. It's part of why I don't like deep learning.
What? Who said anything about buying with bitcoins?
I mean recording the package tracking event history in a public ledger with the relevant actors signing events using their keys and hashes of 'trusted' info, and comparing that info with the info on the seller's account and buyer's account.
Pay with PayPal like a normal person, just make the tracking events hold the shipper, buyer, seller, etc accountable to the information they provided.
Squeezed out by Silicon Valley, far-right creates its own corporate world
1. There's a whole ton of people who will hire someone specifically on the basis on him having struck a blow at the PC culture thing.

2. If he wins against Google in court, he might not really have to care about his career.

3. Cashing in on your fifteen minutes can equal money. People will ask him to speak. People will ask him to do exclusive interviews, etc.
I don't even know where to start counterarguing this there were so many bits I took issue with. The first point I'd call out is the assertion that diversified investment will in some way distort corporate thinking in such a way that it's more beneficial for them to collude than to compete.

I'd argue; 1. that already happens, and is entirely tangential to index funds. I'd cite the west coast hiring collusion (apple et al.) a few years back. It's just a matter of when there is "enough benefit" to both parties, and as it turns out that happens relatively rarely; otherwise each corp seems to act in self-interest. (as makes sense)

2. investment in an index is often proportional to the weight of the company within that strata. Similarly; a company can only be in certain indices by nature of certain properties. Are we supposed to accept that companies will suddenly stop trying to be the big dog in their particular pile? Driving revenue from non-investment sources will continue to be necessary and competition will continue to serve that end.

Now, I'm not a financier, thus my looking at the above from a primarily "incentives/psychology" angle. But someone could tell me why I'm wrong to ALSO say that I don't see why "index funds" are special. Diversification has existed long before the funds, it just became much easier. You can pry my diversification from my cold dead hands; even if I have to set up my allocations/buckets myself. So why should I see this as anything other than an attempt to make a powerful technique less accessible such that market inefficiencies can continue to be exploited by the financial elite?

I see many similar echoes in this to a debate in a video game I play (Path of Exile) at the risk of drawing a strange comparison. Trading in the game is _terrible_. If you want to trade effectively/diversify/etc you need your own tools, special skills, time and expertise. As a result many junior players get screwed/ripped off/scammed/blocked from progressing, where savvey players get unbelievably rich. Whenever improving trading is suggested, a vocal subset responds viscerally against it saying it'll ruin the game etc etc; but as someone who currently takes a good amount of advantage in the current information assymetry, I don't buy that argument. Plenty of other games have good trading; and in the same sense, I imagine large funds were all heavily diversified similarly to indices prior to the 1970's.

So someone who knows this shit: tear my arguments apart. Show me why I shouldn't see this as just another instance of financial misdirection.
They could've had a spine and supported intelligent discourse. Seems like a leadership problem.

"At Google, just as we strive for a diverse workforce, we also encourage the free flow of ideas and along with that, support the vigorous discussion around those ideas. We don't comment on specific HR issues." (EDIT: Minor grammar edits for my faux PR statement)

And that would've been the end of it, had they had the fortitude to ignore the witch hunt.
That's because you value your power over your peace of mind, which is fine and true for most people. I think they just meant in terms of a purely happiness based value system.
The space station gets a supercomputer
That's the sort of mafia-style comment that makes people want to stand and fight. Nice career you've got there. It'd be a shame if you disagreed with us and we made you un-hireable, wouldn't it?

He was a software engineer at Google for five years, and not fired for being bad at programming. And lots of people think his firing was unfair. I think he'll be OK.
Wonder if they could prevent this by requiring third party sellers to print amazon shipping labels. That should give amazon the correcting tracking information and ups/usps/fedex/whoever would have the accurate address.
Things look like they are turning around. Mainstream media wouldn't normally publish the "evil" side's story unaltered, although WSJ has always been respectable.
> The streaming at 128kbps IMO has always been an anti-piracy measure; given that those previews are inevitably going to be scraped

I've never thought about the problem but it should be solvable. If you only stream hi quality to logged users you can track their behaviour.
> Upper management tried to placate this surge of outrage by shaming me and misrepresenting my document...

You are James Damore?
It's not the customer's fault that Amazon pays its employees poor wages and asks too much of them. It's Amazon's job to put its employees in positions to do their jobs well.
does anyone really believe that google handling of diversity, will have any impact on its future

is it easy to copy google, to build a competitor
can google competitors really beat it, by handling diversity differently

lets be realistic .. unless google breaks the law somehow in its handling of diversity .. anything they do is subjective ad of little impact on its future
Seems a bit much to me. When the Soviets put undesirables and political prisoners into gulags they didn't give them fabulous salaries and incredible perks.
Sexism in our industry is a serious issue. What does it say about is if we can't or won't discuss it? What if it were about racism? Would we deny it's an issue?

Silencing only benefits the stronger side. Is that who we want to be as a community?
It doesnt sound like he regretted what he wrote or wished he had a "do over"
Tbh he could probably make a career out of this tbh.
Visiting the Drudge Report is too high a price to pay.
> When the whole episode finally became a giant media controversy

This is a bit self referential.

But seriously who cares. People get fired daily, many of them get fired unjustly... and you know what we don't write tons and tons of articles about them.

At first I felt a bit bad for the guy... socially awkward guy who jumps to some misguided conclusions based on quoted research. Ideally, he would get some kind of training maybe an explanation from a sociology researcher how he incorrectly jumped to conclusions.

But this woe is me shtick, reaching out to the alt-right publications, then continuing on to do an op-ed on the WSJ. I no longer feel bad for him; he got what he deserved.
You could go:
"Homie, hook a hacka up". As a now-adult-used-to-wear-baggy-pants I'd identify with the target market.
There's a lot of hypocrisy around this individual. If he were a woman facing termination for speaking out about something, then people would be referring to this media tour as "attention whoring." Instead this is being given the context of somehow speaking out against some kind of oppression.

No matter where you stand on the issue, he disseminated a company wide memo criticizing the company-wide hiring practices in a preachy way that didnt leave room for the company to answer back. In what company would that not be labeled insubordination?
I order from Amazon exactly because I don't have to deal with this bullshit.

If I was willing to carefully scrutinize sellers, comb through intentionally misleading ads, build a working knowledge of common scams, and keep all records for the occasional resolution process, I would use eBay or Craigslist.

I would much rather switch to ordering from Best Buy and Target than adapt to this kind of adversarial buyer beware model.
A fair point, I prefer well trained humans to inaccessible algorithms, but in this case the idea is that the automation includes certain guarantees of data accuracy.

Besides it looks like there were some humans here behaving like automatons anyways, and poorly.
It's very unfortunate, when the same thing happened to me amazon refunded me straight away, they acknowledged the person who signed the package was not me and I had my money back straight away.
on .ca they seem to be newer accounts, often "FIRSTNAME LASTNAME" "located" in the US somewhere.

Totally forgot the _every_ book thing - they also sometimes have items that aren't actually released yet, but are available for immediate shipping, which I guess gets them bumped up a bit.
I partially agree, had this been kept as an internal firestorm they could have some other solution(offer placement somewhere else within the company or another company), I have personally seen this happen elsewhere.
It's nice to finally hear the other side of the story. It has been a public execution for now, and I think, even if the way he formulates it might be better, that he has got a very good point: more and more the debate is cut short on some subjects, and some people rather keep their opinions to themselves by fear of being ashamed by the 'empire of the Good'. Not that I agree or not with their ideas, but it makes me sad to see self-limitation of free speech.
A Theory of Jerks (2014)
Previous posts have been censored: They would appear in the most active list https://news.ycombinator.com/active and never be seen on the homepage.
Treat it as non-linear optimization, then you are right in the class of most complex problems. Make a better optimizer enabling more useful applications and you can be both scientifically famous and make billions with it! ;-)
Didn't I read that Prime loses them money most of the time? I don't think the membership fee is a real replacement for regular revenue streams; it seems to me like the point is more to encourage people to "get their money's worth" by buying from Amazon more.
Big Head!
a sensationalist tone does reach a wider audience. If nuance attracted eyeballs, none of this would be happening.
"Volume on the path ETH→BTC→USD is a lot higher than ETH→USD"
which kinda reinforces the point that there is no liquidity
Not as long as every preexisting application on your computer validates IP addresses and tells you that colons are not valid in IPs and domains.
Indeed. If you add an unsigned plugin (that is, one lacking a .safariextz file) to Extension Builder and try to install it from there, and you do not already have a developer certificate, you will see the message, "Without a Safari Extensions Certificate, this extension will only be available until you quit Safari." And it will be so.
Well, I would say this particular step helped rather than hurt. It let him convey his side as other than sexist and misogynistic, which if you only go through second or third party sources could easily have been your impression. How a search for his name comes up with a WSJ article where he explains he was trying to have a reasoned intellectual discussion.

Sure, some companies will still not like his stance, but they wouldn't have hired him previously either. Some companies that would have passed will probably give him a second look with this to explain his side of the situation.
They do that here. The DNR sells very cheap seedlings in spring.

But where to plant them? Around here(rural Wisconsin) anything that isnt roads, houses, or farmland is trees. Trees require the same soil as food.

They could plant more in the city, which would lower air conditioning costs by providing shade. But mature trees are a safety hazard, as they can fall during storms.
reposting my previously flagged post, in the exact wording:

> How in the world is this article supposed to buttress your argument that women are somehow innately unfit for STEM careers?

I never made that argument. You're in the same boat as the people that got James fired by misrepresenting his view. Whether it's lack of reading comprehension or malevolence on your part, I'm not going to deal with you further.

> The article literally says "A recent study found that rather than too few girls opting to study scientific subjects or women forgoing careers to care for their children, the biggest cause of gender imbalance in Stem is cultural."

I'm not actually saying the causes aren't cultural. To the contrary.

> Clicking through the link, you get to this paper [1], which is in fact a pretty thorough refutation of your entire position.

I don't see how exactly that's the case, but given that you're unable to even represent my position properly, I'm not interested in investigating this with you any further.
FAKE Craigslist login trying to steal passwords – Please DDOS
Why would he?
Not really new information, that has been known for a few days now actually -at least for myself it has.
I've had great experiences with Amazon the few times something went wrong.

- Had a fire extinguisher shipped to me but the pin apparently got knocked out in the box and it discharged during shipping. They sent out a new fire extinguisher immediately, I got to keep the old one and got it recharged for $10.

- A water filter was held by USPS and I wasn't able to pick it up in time. They sent out a new water filter (different shipping so it got to my door) even before the first one was sent back for non-pickup.

- Ordered through Amazon Fresh and some bread got crushed by a 2L soda. Sent a one-line message to them "Bread was crushed by 2L soda" Bam -- refund for bread.

- Called, questioning a $10 charge I had on my credit card, even though I hadn't ordered anything. They tracked it down to a Prime Video subscription I had made that had ended its "free trial period." I just said "Oh! I was going to cancel that!" and they removed the charge and cancelled it for me right then and there without me even asking. I've never heard of any company doing something like that that easily. In my experience "free trial periods" are just traps trying to get people to forget and let the subscription run, so I didn't even bother asking, but they went ahead and removed it.
You really are thick, pal. That one was personal.
I mean, maybe. But Benchmark is heavily bought into Uber. They've got a lot to lose/gain here. And they have a reputation to defend not just with future founders, but also future LPs. You can bet that there are a lot of potential LPs looking at VC behavior here, and that ones who are deferential to Kalanick will have a harder time raising future funds if this whole thing goes tits up.

Benchmark clearly believes that Kalanick is toxic to Uber's success. Given the amount of money they have in the game, and given the belief that Kalanick will sink Uber, it's pretty hard for me to come up with odds that future founders will be Benchmark-averse that overcome the amount of money they have in play with Uber plus whatever heat they'll take from their LPs.
Frankly, I don't think you're in the majority. Personally, I buy from third-party sellers a lot because I get two-day shipping free and it's easy to shop on Amazon. If I got badly burned I might change my behavior but so far I haven't. I wonder how many even notice the difference.
It's much worse for me now that I have a kid. I of course categorically refuse to buy any kids products from third-party sellers on Amazon, and Amazon provides no good way of filtering them out, so I have started to drive to Target much more often. The secondary benefit is that Target has much better prices than Amazon.
I think it's about what exactly is the DMCA used against. My first thought was as well that they claimed the act of writing down the domain name somehow violated the copyright of their domain. That sounds kind of silly and if it were actually the case, I think a hash/regex solution would make sense.

However I think what actually happened was that the business is operating paywalls/"anti-adblocker-walls" for other sites - so they claim that blocking them constitutes "circumvention of protection devices" for their customers - which indeed would be far severe for adblockers if confirmed by a judge.

(That's my understanding, though I might have gotten it wrong)
He didn't make this a national controversy. But since it is a national controversy, and he is at the center of it, why shouldn't he make the most of this opportunity?
Yes, because women speaking up about issues in tech never get any platform at all. "Attention whoring" is definitely the standard reaction.
See here is the extension for Chrome https://github.com/njuljsong/wsjUnblock Technically you just need to set the location referer to something like Facebook's domain.
Well obviously. He's not a politician. He won't come out and debase himself in a false apology for his views.

His worldview is fundamentally different from that of his opponents, and he makes no bones about it.
Susan fowler. If you want to bring up differences in response, the difference in media response is interesting.
Actually, companies mostly exist to get work done and CA is an at will state. If you get in the way of getting work done then you likely will get fired. The document was readable by anyone internally and eventually everyone externally. So there was no misrepresentation.
You can use the word 'censor' if you like but it's the normal action of user flags, software, and moderation and it works much the same way regardless of the story. This tends not to be so visible during turbulent periods, but what can you do.

'Google memo' stories have been on HN's front page. Many more have been flagged off it. That is understandable because they didn't contain significant new information. Quantity isn't the criterion here. Hot-topic discussions tend to all be the same, and the substantiveness quotient declines steeply under repetition.

Many of the flagged stories have still been vigorously discussed (i.e. hundreds of comments each), so I wouldn't use the word 'censor' for those. The site goal isn't to hide them, it's to preserve the variety and substantiveness of the front page, which I believe is why most people come here.