skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
At present we grow enough grains alone to satisfy the caloric needs of about 20 billion people. Agriculturally, we are living in a post-scarcity world, unless the population triples again, and we have been for forty years. What we need in agriculture today is not more efficiency, but more resilience and more justice in the distribution of the results.

It is inexcusable that today, forty years since the end of food scarcity, poor people starve to death every day while steers are fatted on corn and soybeans for the rich. Through efficiency, we've achieved a post-scarcity world. Now we need to achieve a post-poverty world. Efficiency is not going to get us there.

Locavorism might promote greater resiliency; but does it? Does the long-distance and international food trade ameliorate or exacerbate the privation of crop failures? Do small, local farms produce less fertilizer runoff per acre than big agribusiness operations? (Historically, in first place, with the most agrochemicals applied per acre, has been the suburban lawn.) Is locavorism an effective hedge against new pests devastating monoculture crops? Does it effectively break down hierarchies of richer and poorer regions by reducing long-distance exploitation, or does it reinforce them by keeping the money of the rich close to home?

I don't know. But when you're sitting in a fancy restaurant, pondering whether the lamb on the menu, priced the same as 100 kilos of soybeans, comes from Niman Ranch down the road or from a giant ranch in New Zealand — don't delude yourself into thinking that that's a serious food policy issue.
You vote for it.

Sorry, it may not be much but that's how democracy works. I'd love to hear of a better system but as someone a lot wiser than me said, they haven't found it yet. At the same time these are laws that will affect you AND other people: if everyone thought about themselves we'd get nowhere. We could start a political philosophy discussion but I think it's OT.

As for changing URL, first you may very well lose much in doing so (isn't it getting harder and harder to avoid using Google?). That's the whole point of monopolies, and the USA has many laws to prevent abuse of monopoly powers. Why should we not have laws to prevent abuse of information power?
Someone in the comments said Basecamp. I second that.
How  an Early Stage Entrepreneur Can Pay it Forward
I think it's easier to hit the sea, and gives you more leeway for slightly heavier landings, intact, with a lighter capsule. It's obviously a trade off, I guess.
creating a device that logs everything you type, takes pictures of you without you knowing it

The article you linked to supports neither of those accusations.
You're living in a fantasy world. No city in the US is so corrupt as to allow a large supermarket to sell globs of paraffin and beeswax as "tomatoes." Those are actual tomatoes. If you have a real criticism of them, your hyperbole or delusion seriously undermines it, and you neglected to state it.
If it comes down to that, yes. Though I'd first try to track down their requests in the logs and see if it's something we can fix on our end.

Obviously, some companies make a conscious decision not to support all browsers, so there might be no way around it in that case.
He'd have to prove he wrote the code. Which leads to an interesting question - what constitutes an admissible proof of code authorship? Is depth of knowledge of the codebase sufficient?
They're not made of wax. They don't even contain wax. They just taste that way. Sorry I didn't make that clearer to you.
I have a strong intent on remaining a coder/tech guy for the rest of my life.

Why? Because the only thing I've gotten a real kick out of, for the past 15 years, is learning new technologies and applying them to projects. I get bored after a few years of working with the same tech.

Sure I've managed some projects and even some people, and still have to occasionally, but it feels like being a fish out of water, not doing something you were born to do.

I suppose there will be a day when you find yourself surrounded by younger people with technical authority over you, because you just couldn't keep up any longer. But maybe there won't, if you don't let it happen?
Common names is a double-edged sword. If your name is sufficiently generic you're bound to share it with at least one sex offender...
Video: Giant Robot Arm Powers Innovative Halo: Reach Light Sculpture
Absolutely---it's a matter of degree, and judgments thereof are bound to be subjective. That said, I'd still claim that the EC community, broadly taken, appears particularly prone to tribalism.

I'm far from a zealot on the "theoretical foundation" question, and it's possible to point to fields that have been, perhaps, even harmed by their possession of such a foundation (eg, reinforcement learning). That said, you need at least one or the other---theory or methodology. You mention DPB, and it's a good example: a lot of value was gained from one line of research centered on that single benchmark, despite its flaws. Pull together a curated suite of such problems, release a common implementation, get it widely used, and the field would benefit immensely. Some equivalent of Caruana's grand comparison, from the supervised ML world, could also do much good.

In any case, it's an interesting topic, but we could go back and forth on it forever. GAs and their progeny (including ACO and NEAT) are fun to consider and lend themselves to accessible explanations, so they get a fair amount of press. Whether or not that's justified is something we'll likely disagree on---but I wanted to push back a bit against the implication, intended or not, that they're where the action is in AI today.
Physics Envy
Possible, but if being honest is considered creepy these days it probably means something very bad about our society.
Figuring out magazine subscriptions in the iPad age
Why Rolf is traveling around the world with no luggage
Is it true they are shutting them down?
Let's see if we can't get locavorism to address nuclear nonproliferation, while we're at it. Jeepers.

Whether we should be eating more or less meat, whether meat should be priced massively higher or not, why can't we agree that most other things being equal, we should eat better meat when possible?

Cargill meat is inflicting all the same imbalances on the world food market, and loading our food with antibiotics while still increasing foodborne illness, and reducing the overall quality of our meals.

Niman Ranch, for what it's worth, is a consortium of independent small farms spread all over the place.
Selection pressure creates the complexity. Aside from what is selected for (the ~50MB of genome), where does the extra complexity come from? Why is it there? There's no reason why selection pressure would concentrate any complexity in the extra-genomic data rather than the genome itself. In other words, most of the complexity of the initiator mechanisms is redundant in the genome itself, aside from that crucial bit to translate from genome to vehicle which is simply carried over trivially from one generation to the next. The rest is probably the substrate data, I.E. behavior of molecules in general.
> Taking that as our (relatively wide) target, I don't think protein folding and all that fun stuff adds much information.

It may not add information at all, just as the physical structure of a transistor does not add much information to what a computer can or can not do. In a computer the 'smarts' however are not even embedded in the connections (like what's being posited is the case for the brain), but in the software. Software is state, and software is, to all intents an purposes as good as invisible, unless you find a way to do a dump of what sits inside a running brain.

And then you still have to reverse engineer the computer that that software was running on in order to be able to resume.

Myers DNA length argument is easily disproved by reducing to extremes, if DNA length would be an irrelevant item then you could encode a brain with an arbitrarily short length of DNA, the fact that it takes up as much as it does proves that it is from an information processing perspective not a simple structure. So length is relevant, maybe not the whole story, but definitely a factor.

Part of me wonders if we are going to find one day that the genome does not just contain proteins but also contains the 'boot strap' state required to power up a brain after its initial configuration is complete.

That's highly speculative but there is a lot more data in the genome than what seems to be used and nature never was that inefficient, even if there are many things that could be improved on with the function oriented hindsight that we have.
My impression is that Schmidt was the one behind the massive expansion of Google into everything. Both in its need to have a finger in every pie and it's sequence of acquisition it reminds a bit of MS and other such companies. I don' think Schmidt was behind much of the current success, just behind the direction Google has been sailing to.

But I agree that if Schmidt deserved a lot less credit for it, then his position as CEO would be more at risk from these gaffes.
Has anyone tried using a Nexus One with a TMobile data plan only ($40 unlimited) as their sole communication device?

Id love to save $40 money off cost of iPhone; been eagerly awaiting the day to use data plans only. Maybe we are almost there with Tmobile unlimited and NExus One?
Meet The YouTube Stars Making $100,000 Plus Per Year
Sorry, I think the point I'm making is: "I don't know if you're talking about future-protein or not, but if what you're saying is, 'all progress in meat production sounds good to me, so bring on the cheap Tyson chicken breasts!', yeah, don't do that."

What you do with mycoprotein and cultured meat is between you and your deity. I have no opinions about it. I'm also fine with you consuming all your meals in tablet or milkshake form. Just leave the chickens alone!
Last semester, I took a class with Prof Gerry Sussman (of SICP fame). It was totally mindbending, and seeing his code samples (usually introduced by saying "I was hacking on this last night...") left me with a sense of awe and amazement. I can't even count the number of times I said "I didn't even know that was possible!" upon seeing his code.

This is a man who has been coding since atleast the early 70s, and is still in the top of his form. I would be happy to have even 10% of the skills he has. I think its very sad that a lot of people in the younger generation treat older developers as if they're out of touch and are dinosaurs from a bygone era. Sure they may not know Ruby on Rails or JQuery, but quite a few of them have mastered the timeless concepts and are a great source of wisdom and insight. I would love to work with and be mentored by someone who has "done his time".
As other people already said, you're underselling yourself. You have great skills and a great mind to even achieve more skills. If you're interested in the tech/web space and really interested in the creating part, why not learn programming? Yes, it takes time, yes it can be hard, but it can also be fulfilling. I'm a business guy myself, although I study Electrical Engineering and I'm currently trying to learn Ruby on Rails. Frameworks like Rails or platforms like Titanium (www.appcelerator.com) make it easy for non-programming people to learn the basics (be it Ruby, JS, HTML or CSS) and actually create something. I did an online tutorial on JavaScript, after that I dived into Titanium and tried to re-implement an example. After a few days and some setbacks, my iPhone app was 90% done. As I said, if it's creating in the tech world, you're interested in, don't worry be crappy and learn a lot along the way! :) What do you have to lose?
> If we live in a democracy then surely I should have a say without having to pay 461$.

If you live in the US, then you already have a vote without spending $461 that can affect how Google operates.

If you wish to change how Google operates from within, it will cost you $461.

> How is democracy (eveyone has a vote), not relevant?

Democracy is not about everyone having a vote. Their is a large portion of the US population that cannot vote for various reasons.

As for the down votes: probably because your comment doesn't really contribute anything worthwhile to the discussion.
Yes, 'hedge' fund is (a probably intentionally) amusing misnomer.
I read the stupid book cover to cover, except for Galt's speech (because it was completely pointless). That was my original post. I didn't have it handy to quote from.
The "Intel CEO got to the office and asked for 'mah coffee'" Tweet is even funnier. Where does it end? Like or not, stuff like this is actually a bright-line difference between HN and Reddit.

To the battlements!
Groupon's GAP in Judgment
Why do the have a painted statue of a roman emperor in a article about painted Greek statues?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_of_Prima_Porta

Also, weren't many roman and greek statues sheltered somewhat and protected against wearing off all this paint?
I find it a bit creepy, because he (or to be exact Google) is one of the people driving us in that direction.

If you were on a ship, and the captain told you: "It's hard, but at these rate we'll probably go straight into the storm", and then he turns and does nothing about it, or keeps going... I'd find it a bit creepy.

But that's very much a personal opinion. I agree it's not a fair adjective (as in it's too heavy) to use for what we are talking about.
As the person responsible for sparking that thoughtful, and reflective piece: I have nothing to say but kudos, and march on.

If there is a method to the madness, and you're systematically building, launching and tossing projects, then there is nothing wrong with that. I just had to address what I thought was impatience, and decided to make it public because I have noticed it as a trend lately.
Hah, also ordered on launch day :) And I'm glad I got the desk and car docks, as they seem to be sold out as well.

Initially I also thought that the N1 touch screen was glass, but then I managed to put a couple of ugly scratches into it when the N1 was in the same pocket as my keys for a minute.

When I complained about this to someone who works for the maker of the worlds most popular phone (cough), I was told that the N1 screen is made from a very hard resin, but plastic nonetheless. They had done some competitive analysis.
"if being honest is considered creepy"

I don't see it that way, he's not creepy because he's honest, he's creepy because of what he's honest about. The fictional Gordon Gecko was greedy and honest, but we wouldn't say that being honest was considered greedy, just that being greedy was considered greedy and Gordon Gecko happened to be honest about his venality.

In this case, the CEO is being accused of creepiness for the beliefs he espouses, and he is honest about them. If the CEO of another search engine believes the exact same things but says otherwise, you're right we wouldn't consider him creepy yet because we wouldn't know. But the moment we find out, we'd consider that CEO creepy and dishonest.

Mind you, upmodded for forcing me to examine my beliefs carefully. One thing we don't want to do is give people/companies who don't say one way or the other a free pass. In other words, if another CEO says they're in favour of privacy, fine. But it would be unfair to pile on Eric yet say nothing about Ballmer just because Ballmer doesn't say anything. The right thing to do is to ask Steve Ballmer what Microsoft/Bing's stance is on these exact same issues. And ask FB, and Apple, and everyone else collecting data. Saying nothing should not be better than being honest.
We can solve protein folding, we're doing that on a daily basis. We just can't do it fast enough (yet) because we're using (somewhat constrained) brute force for a search space with a very large number of dimensions. As a consequence of that the computations with the current algorithms are for practical reasons limited to relatively small proteins.

But the methods are as far as I understand well understood and it is more of an optimization problem than something unsolved.

Edit: or did you mean 'solved' in an analytical way?
As often as it's still badass.
Excellent blog entry you have there, although I tend to agree more with Sakon: We should not disregard "higher principles", whatever those may be (religion, samurai code, etc.), otherwise, what good are the things that being single-minded brings us?

I am curious, what happens to Daigoro?
I don't think it's about support. I think it's about respect and honesty.

The collective mentality at many companies (web or not) relays things such as "oh, they're just users" or "well, that's too bad it didn't work out".

It's easy to default into the general presumption that great support will solve problems like these. However, the underlying issue isn't support, it's respect.

It comes from the top and is echoed throughout the company right down to the customer. Sometimes support issues can't be solved and when they can't, respect defines the interaction. Even when problems can be solved, if a user / customer / co-worker is treated with respect, they typically feel valued and satisfied when they are treated with true respect.
"Don't BE evil" isn't the same as "Don't DO evil."
I appreciate your candor. There are a couple of doctors who joined the beta, presumably with ideas on how this tool can help them. Our thoughts are that when a patient walks in they can check themselves in, and their check in can easily be integrated into the clinics scheduling software via the API. Furthermore, new patients can automatically fill out the (insurance/patient info) form and submit it electronically on their phone. This would reduce paperwork burden on the office manager and result in higher efficiencies. The clinic can schedule appointments and personalize the users page with their next appointment data, history and doctors notes, again seamlessly via integration with their practice management software. We have not yet integrated push notifications, but it is in the pipeline and I am sure you can see the implications. We transmit everything over SSL and do not store this kind of data on our servers so I would presume it would be HIPAA compliant. The larger vision is that these types of applications become developed for a wide array of verticals, and perhaps even monetized by their developers.

Based on feedback from a large minority of beta users we feel that the software needs some tweaking to make it easier to leverage beyond posting comments to your Presence. We are currently working on it and expect a new release very soon. We agree that the examples in the FAQ (such as "How can I use Presence?") may be too broad and we may need to provide much more detailed use-cases. Once again, thank you for your comments, there is no need for apologies, they were much appreciated.
From the article:

> the number of words it takes to state a thought is directly proportional to how clearly you understand it

This agrees with my experience, and is a powerful thing to recognise.
True, but my guess is that the extra-genomic data, the preexisting cell, is a trivial amount, since it's always only interpreting the genome and is itself built on an interpretation of a genome. Selection pressure has no reason to store a huge among of complexity outside of the genome after all. The bare minimum will do. As to how exactly that compares to the known 50MB, I've no answer but I'd guess it's an almost flat-rate amongst all species built by evolution.
"That's not to say that a good programmer couldn't learn to teach or vice versa. It's just that they're orthogonal skill sets."

In college (for my CS degree) I had to take a technical writing class. I loved it. I knew next to nothing about the field when I started, but soon found the idea of translating complex ideas and concepts into more easily understood formats quite intriguing.

It was, in some ways, much like programming. I came to appreciate how hard it is for some people to understand some ideas (a point later reinforced when I started tutoring), and learned ways to improve descriptions and presentation.

It seemed to me that if you are involved in some geeky tech field it behooves you to learn how to communicate with Earthlings. Bizarrely, when it came time to pick a minor, my counselor made a comment to the effect that with a CS major I should be looking at, oh, a EE or ME minor sort of thing. Not something out in left field, such as tech writing. I hadn't yet told him that in fact that was the minor I was going to pursue. :)

Well worth the time and effort; if you have great ideas but cannot adequately express them, you're losing.
People On YouTube Make Great Videos.

The article just observes the (almost expected) result.
"What makes programming so unique?"

E.W.Dijkstra, "The humble programmer", ACM Turing Lecture 1972

"Let me conclude. Automatic computers have now been with us for a quarter of a century. They have had a great impact on our society in their capacity of tools, but in that capacity their influence will be but a ripple on the surface of our culture, compared with the much more profound influence they will have in their capacity of intellectual challenge without precedent in the cultural history of mankind. Hierarchical systems seem to have the property that something considered as an undivided entity on one level, is considered as a composite object on the next lower level of greater detail; as a result the natural grain of space or time that is applicable at each level decreases by an order of magnitude when we shift our attention from one level to the next lower one. We understand walls in terms of bricks, bricks in terms of crystals, crystals in terms of molecules etc. As a result the number of levels that can be distinguished meaningfully in a hierarchical system is kind of proportional to the logarithm of the ratio between the largest and the smallest grain, and therefore, unless this ratio is very large, we cannot expect many levels. In computer programming our basic building block has an associated time grain of less than a microsecond, but our program may take hours of computation time. I do not know of any other technology covering a ratio of 1010 or more: the computer, by virtue of its fantastic speed, seems to be the first to provide us with an environment where highly hierarchical artefacts are both possible and necessary. This challenge, viz. the confrontation with the programming task, is so unique that this novel experience can teach us a lot about ourselves. It should deepen our understanding of the processes of design and creation, it should give us better control over the task of organizing our thoughts. If it did not do so, to my taste we should not deserve the computer at all!"

Edit: http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD...
Shame this tweet was stealing the original tweet http://twitter.com/adrianmw75/status/21579292721 without attribution
.... Something is obviously being lost in translation here.

There are certain programming problems which can be solved once and used forever. The problem wouldn't necessarily be considered a single function. However, it isn't a massive problem either.

My friend solves these problems by creating a single .cpp and a single .h file. The .cpp is the implementation; the .h file defines the interface. He calls this a "snippet".

Now, the power of the snippet is that you can simply copy the .cpp and .h into any C++ project anywhere and it's good to go. There is no tweaking, include'ing, anything. It just works.

This code can then serve you for the rest of your life, regardless of what project you are currently working on. You can say "I've solved that problem before", and be able to spend literally 30 seconds implementing it into your current project, because all you have to do is drag'n'drop two files.