skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For decades now, there has been a significant chuck of the nation's fringe (10-20%) who simply CANNOT accept a member of the opposite political party as a legitimate President.

All through the 90's, the talk radio fringe used the same argument that Bill Clinton's victory wasn't truly legitimate because he didn't win a majority of the popular vote. And they had a special prosecutor follow him around for his entire Presidency, pretty much on a fishing expedition (younger people might not remember this, but Ken Starr stumbled across the Monica Lewinsky thing years into the process).

All through the 2000's, the fringe left rejected George W. Bush's legitimacy, because they felt that it was decided by a Supreme Court with a thin majority of Republican appointees.

President Obama spent 8 years assuring people that he isn't a Muslim, and wasn't really born in Kenya. It sounds like parody, but roughly 1/3 of partisan Republicans seriously believe in this conspiracy theory (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/poll-persiste...).

Today, partisan Democrats just can't let go of the "Russia hacked the election!" conspiracy theory... even though, from an independant's perspective, they sound flatly insane. At BEST, someone with ties to Russia leaked some embarrassing emails from a criminally insecure mail server. If HRC hadn't been the worst Democratic nominee in decades, then it wouldn't have mattered regardless.

I don't know what's going to happen with the next inevitable handover in 4-12 years. But it's a pretty safe bet that the next Democrat will be seen as "illegitimate" by roughly one-fifth to one-quarter of the nation as well. This is just the not-so-new normal.
Not per unit of the the user's capital/labor expended.
AI is already superhuman, but not in those areas we associate as strongly human :)
In a democracy, you won't always get what you want; sometimes other people win.

Is that what you meant by "not all it's cracked up to be"?
Today’s Version Control Tools Are Still Primitive
Recruiter made me read through the slide deck. He called me the second-time and 'pop quiz'ed me on the contents of deck.

What a strange company.
Just to clarify on my own position a bit, I don't think freedom of the press or freedom of speech are overrated at all, I think the institutions themselves are overrated and run by corrupt people. The freedoms themselves are essential - without them, it would be corrupt people with an absolute monopoly on the media.
I was expecting a far more mixed reaction, so I'm glad to hear this engaged people. Writing educational material to takes more work (and expertise) than I'd be willing to guarantee, but I'll keep the sentiment in mind :).
It's problematic to identify accounts as bots. Many accounts are partially posting from a bot and partially posting from a human, so what are they? Better to do that at the level of individual posts then the user would see right there that something was posted by the api, and it'd be harder for political spambots for example to flood threads, you could have options to turn off api posts for a thread. This would drive some bots to use selenium etc (perhaps some do already), but I think would be more effective than just marking accounts somehow as 'bot' with fallible detection methods.

Also most of the problems on twitter are caused by humans, not bots. Humans can be cruel, harass, bombard victims with messages, threaten them with death, rape etc (this is regularly happening right now to women on twitter), and those are the more problematic interactions. Yes sometimes spambots liking posts or replying to posts are annoying, or the ones that DM you are pretty bad, but they're not as annoying as humans at their worst.
Also, they aren't predators
That's not a solution, that's sweeping the problem under the rug: "just have the OS provide storage, therefore it's not my problem any more, solved. (Never mind that with a few more layers, the tree would decompress into a structure larger than all the storage ever available to mankind)"
ES2017 is also a much more consequential revision:

* async functions

* shared buffers (between workers) and atomic operations for these buffers

* additional native object methods (Object.values, Object.entries, Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor, string padding)

* trailing commas in function argument lists (definition & callsite)

* unicode case folding in /ui
I believe the ketamine anti-depressant experiments use a different anesthetic to put subjects under in order to split the trip experience from the lower-level chemical effects, and still find benefits. If the trip itself is not necessary for ketamine, that makes it more plausible that it's not necessary for psilocybin etc.

(Of course, this doesn't rule out the possibility that much of the benefit is coming from after the trip during regular life based on experiencing regular life with 'reset' neurons under the Carhart-Harris/Nutt interpretation.)
They could just identify those as 'posted from x', as twitter should know.
Even if you're overestimating your ability, it does not really matter for the case at hand. You can have someone you trust write the review for you.
The Kosher Salt Question
Yes, although to be fair they tend to do that because kernel threading never quite does what it needs to do (e.g. doesn't scale to the # threads applications need these days).

Your comment is spot on though: I'm only aware of two modern implementations that really work : Erlang and Go.
I'm guessing you also grew up with a TV with local news, libraries, 12 years of schooling, plenty of drinkable water, grocery stores you could walk to that were plentiful and affordable, farmers who've been using modern farming techniques for decades and felt just as safe as you, had dialup, electricity in your home, no civil wars, no warlords, no constant raids by gangs. When cell phones first came into my life, you could pay $50/month for the cheapest privilege to make phone calls (that I wasn't going to use). The most useful things about them was you could pay $20/month extra for unlimited texting.

But a cellphone to many of them is their first affordable full-time internet access. They could use this to give their children half the childhood you were privileged with.
Too bad they somehow thought it was a good idea to make the syntax resemble MATLAB of all languages. Perhaps most of the nausea inducing warts could be worked around with some kind of transcompilation, although some semantic issues, such as one-based indexing, would remain.

It'll be a sad day if Julia starts to get such popularity that high quality libraries will be Julia-only.
A phone battery only has around 10 watthours. That's less than 1 cent worth of electricity if you wait hours until it's mined empty. It's more effective to just donate a single cent than to let them mine on your phone.
I still don't know if investing time in becoming really good at vi/vim is a genuine huge optimization, or a much smaller micro-optimization.

For example, going from hunt-and-peck to touch-typing is a huge noticeable optimization and totally worth it (in my opinion). Even if the learning process is not fun, you'll get enough out of it that you should do it.

Going from QWERTY to Dvorak, on the other hand, is less of a noticeable leap. You should do it if you'll enjoy the process, but the advantages aren't so big and so noticable that you should force yourself if it's not fun.

So, my question to people who are pretty regular with VI/VIM now, would you say the benefits are closer to moving from hunt-and-peck to touch-type, or from going from QWERTY to Dvorak?
> The first few were amazing: all cross platform, great stuff. Since then they've branched out... Into becoming a glorified Steam sale.

100% agree with this. I got in a bit late, but the first bundles were still pretty fantastic. I loved the fact that they had Linux games. But eventually quality started slipping.

For example, their claims that a game runs on Linux are very unreliable.

Some games just work out of the box with no sweat at all. Some of them work after some tweaking (installing packages, etc). But I have at least 8 games that either don't work on Linux at all (fail to start due to errors or segfaults) or have some serious issues (random crashes, game breaking bugs). Windows versions of those games worked on wine, so I just swallowed the loss, but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth.

But this is just sloppy quality control. Most of the problems I have mentioned would be detected immediately by simply running the game on the recommended configurations.

All that said, I have since moved on to GOG and so far I have been pretty happy with their claims of Linux support. Had one hiccup ("X3: Terran War Pack"... that was a wasted weekend), but everything else (~30 games) just works. Their quality control seems to be a bit better, and their community forums are helpful (so far), so I'm happy. Pity that they don't have more Linux games I like.
I agree with everything you say, however I am pessimistic on your view of builders; look at those who are "builders" and have money and political ambitions: thiel and zuck for example. Corrupt as hell.

Sure they have built stuff but I wouldn't trust them.

Heck at this point the only builders I think we could trust would be musk and gates...
6 Principles for Driving Online Reputation Management
I don't agree with much of your argument.*

But much of the media is attacking Facebook for the same reason you say they shouldn't: as a way of "acknowledging & working towards a more united society." The fact that a foreign power intervened in our election, likely decisively, should be a cause for all Americans to unite in common defense.

Individual members of the media are also attacking Facebook because these attacks are likely to be quite productive and to lead to real changes. The government has done nothing about the election intervention, and without changes Russia will probably intervene more significantly in the next election. Facebook can make real changes and is susceptible to popular pressure.

* (The US shouldn't complain about foreign electoral interventions because it has intervened itself? I mean, the US has launched coups... Do you seriously think "there is nothing scandalous" about a country being destroyed? It shouldn't defend itself? This is not a soccer game.)
> Didn't the same argument apply in general to why NNs weren't particularly useful for anything ~30 years ago?

Not unless there was good reason to expect that every other possible application of NNs would be as difficult to achieve as general intelligence.
How Lyft adds in-app navigation for drivers via Google Maps?
>Seems like working for someone is a consensual choice that ought be regulated by the free market itself.

It's because the free market is a myth, and what actually exists is all kinds of forces playing against each other, using influence, media, money, laws, and the government for their purposes.

Now, the most powerful forces are those of the people with (m/b)illions in the bank, expensive layers, friends in high places and the ability to move their operations wherever they want, and those are rarely people looking for work -- rather they the people looking for employees.

Which is why laws are required. Because a democratic government represents each person equally -- each has one vote, regardless of their wealth (again in theory, like there's no free market, there's also no actual democratic government). So it serves as a counter-balance between small people and big people/coprs (governments can be in bed with big people/corps but they need to pander to small people too in order get their vote).

Add to that, the fact that without any government at all, you don't get anywhere close to a free market either.

At best you'll get the heavier players doing everything they like -- and having private armies and thugs enabling them, to which regular people can just suck it and play along.

This has been the case in some places in developing countries for example, where, while there nominally a government exists, it's so in the pockets of the local moguls that it's just like their private mercenary enforcement force.

>Some guy might not care about 30 days vacation but might prefer more money, as an example.

Without any kind of legal pressure, guys and gals are gonna get neither "30 days vacation" nor "more money".
Closed Problems in Approximate Computing
No, I mean that the wisdom of the crowds is, well, not.

Good democracy rests on voters making intelligent/rational/etc decisions (implied: otherwise why let them vote?) I think more of my liberal friends now see that this is largely wishful thinking.
Just joined on Patreon, using GIMP since +5 years.
how does F.lux phone home? what does it send?
This post reminded me when I started programming, very nostalgic. I started out with C as my first programming language simply because the language rankings at the time said it was the most popular. Looking back, I don't think C helped me out as much as I wanted it too.

Now to answer your question by looking at your goals. "Knows no programming language" lets me know that you are starting from scratch. In my opinion, this means you need to answer the following question first: do I even like programming? The best way to answer this is to not abuse yourself with C but instead start with python to get a real feel for what programming is.

"Learn coding for building with best design principles" means you want to learn good habits early on. Python has a stable style guide (pip8) and the zen of python, so at least some good habits can be learned quickly. I don't think there is a comparable zen of C, but maybe that's because I haven't looked.

"Gaining efficiency of data structures" means understanding why data structures are important in program design. Python has some pretty solid built-in data structures (i.e lists, sets, dicts, tuples) that are good for beginners who want to experiment with data structures. C doesn't have lists, sets, dicts, or tuples, but you can implement them if you try hard enough.

"Thinking abstractedly in algorithmic rollercoaster of fun"...I think what you meant is the freedom to think about an algorithm and to implement it with ease. Python is fantastic for this, while C requires a lot more thinking to get a thought manifested to code.

This post kinda struck a chord with me because I wrestled with the same question when I started 4 years ago. Python helped me more than C because I was more creation oriented. I wanted to implement a useful tool as fast as possible. With your questions in mind, I think python would be better choice than C as a beginner.
If you want to support GIMP on Patreon, here are direct links for the key developers:

- https://www.patreon.com/pippin

- https://www.patreon.com/zemarmot
A fascinating talk on this subject was given in the Long Now series a little while back: http://longnow.org/seminars/02013/jan/17/statues-walked-what... . Highly recommended.
So if someone deliberately commits suicide by car, that's legally on the driver?
Or, you know, they are joking...
I don't know, the way successful large organizations do things? A small number of intelligent board of directors elect people who have large leeway. Shareholders can vote, but mostly on few items or for no confidence. You'd never let shareholders vote on certain things.

So compared to that model. But I'm sure you could devise something even better if you sat down and thought about it for ten minutes.

(What was the founding fathers idea? Only letting taxpayers or people with more than 100 acres vote? Not suggesting these, just pointing out that you have trivially many options compared to the current model)
Are you referring to some technological advantages of Bitcoin, or the fact that it is more widespread?
I don't know if this helps your friend but I know BMW in Munich is hiring. A lot of departments are fine with English speakers. I found a couple of examples for him if they are useful:

https://recruiting.bmwgroup.de/ibs/Servlets/ibs/controller/s...

https://recruiting.bmwgroup.de/ibs/Servlets/ibs/controller/s...

I'm sure Mercedes and Audi would also have similar openings.
I saw that too but I can't recall what it was Nature of Things on CBC perhaps or maybe NOVA on PBS.

The two were OK up to a point but at a certain age the wolf dramatically changed compared to the puppy; it was uncontrollable.
No, but it means it can still be good sci-fi.

Sci-fi was never about the writing, in the way hi-brow literature was.

Heck, it started from pulp magazines aimed at teenagers.
Js:

async function bar(){...}
function baz() {...}

async function foo() {
var x = await bar();
var y = baz();
return x, y;
}

Lua:

function bar() return something_that_may_yield_deep_inside(...) end
function baz() ... end

function foo()
local x = bar()
local y = baz()
return x, y
end

Iow, in Lua it is irrelevant whether something yields or not, so you don’t care if it is async.
It may not be perfect, but Trollhunters on Netflix is “okay” at the least. My five year old likes it and it doesn’t make me constantly cringe like their recent movies so I’d say they still have hope yet.
Airbus is the epitome of crony capitalism. The company receives billions in "loans" from the EU, without any requirement to repay.
With unlucky departments almost always being cost centres rather than revenue centres.
Reminder that both Mac OS and Windows include blue light reducing as a built-in feature. In case you don't like installing applications for something the OS already does like me.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207513

https://www.howtogeek.com/302186/how-to-enable-night-light-o...
Cats haven't had their genes messed with by humans for nearly as long as dogs have. In a few millenia, cats will be as varied in appearance as dogs.
Too bad it was renamed. "Contains" was a much better name.

"Contains" is used everywhere else - the DOM API included (Element.classList.contains).
I don’t see any changes on mobile. Anyone? I typed Django and React, and then xywndienfn. Don’t see any change.
Facebook probably looked for anything matching "facebook(web-related words)", and were lucky to find one with only one errant character. There were probably enough acceptable variants that the effective computing time was less than 14 characters, maybe less than 13.
The article makes a lot of good points, but for me, the critical error is in assuming that if short term prediction is hard, long term prediction must be massively harder.

He asked a panel for the least impressive thing they did not believe would be possible within a few years. In other words, pick the point closest to the boundary of that classifier. Obviously my future knowledge is imperfect, and anything close to the boundary is subject to a lot of uncertainty. From that difficulty, he hand waves an argument that long term prediction of the unlikelihood of AGI is folly.

The problem is that these aren't in the same class of predictions. One is detailed and precise; the other coarse and broad. Predicting that it will rain at 2:00 PM November 10, 2017 is much more difficult than predicting that the average summer of 2040-2060 will be hotter than the average from 1980-2000. Precise local predictions just arent the same thing as broad global predictions, and difficulty doesn't transfer, because I'm not bootstrapping my global prediction on the local one. I'm using different methods entirely.

There's a similar thing with AI, I think. I can't confidently tell you what the big splash we'll see at NIPS next year or the year after. But I can look at the way we know how to do AI and say I don't think 30 years will see a machine that can make dinner by gathering ingredients from a supermarket, driving home, and preparing the meal.
That's not the same at all, though. The prison is doing the same thing they would be doing, only on a different schedule.

Tesla has demanded that firings be carried out at the same rate as average attrition for poor performance, even though those two things have different causes and remedies. People who perform the least-well on their team but are still a (potentially large!) net benefit are generally not fired, but systems like this demand they be.

What's thoroughly disgusting is an employer summarily firing the bottom X% of their workforce, largely because the top management fucked up scheduling and needs to restore investor confidence.
Alternatively, narrow niches offer many other possibilities for selling skills :-)
I used to think it didn't help because honestly the difference was marginal, but when I turned it up Candle or Ember I started really noticing how I got more tired in the evenings.
Looks like setuid doesn't work because it needs to be set on the Perl binary itself and not the script
Is there any possible way to make all my Humble Bundle e-mail and information not be shared with IGN database ?
It's interesting to think about what we call corruption. If a company bribes someone in the government with decision-making power, it's corruption. If a company pays money to a person in another company with decision-making power within his company (not gov. related), it's usually more difficult to qualify that as corruption.

One could argue that political corruption only arises when someone breaks the illusion of the State being some kind of entity that seeks the well-being of every citizen. I mean, the crime doesn't appear to be about receiving money, but about breaking the illusion (by seeking your own well-being).
One-based indexing is not a semantic issue, it's a language-design decision you may disagree with.
Why OpenMined Is Becoming a Role Model for Open-Source Projects
God, Yes. Why did I not point that out LG 's OLED quality were no good. ( My hand and mind are always out of sync these days )

And one reason why I dont believe Apple will invest in an OLED production line for capacity and assume their quality standard will improve in the future. LG had the best Desktop > TV Size OLED Panel ( WOLED ), that is I think where Apple are heading.
In my experience, most people are generally uneducated about science and math. People educated in science and mathematics are not "elitist", they just have a better understanding of reality. Wikipedia does a pretty good job of explaining things.

Incidentally, phr4ts is using the word "elitist" incorrectly. The dictionary definitions are:

... Relating to or supporting the view that a society or system should be led by an elite. (adj)

... Demonstrating a superior attitude or behavior associated with an elite. (adj)

... A person who believes that a society or system should be led by an elite. (noun)