skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Tubemote: Turn a browser into a YouTube remote
> This situation seems to have balkanized the field (page through a recent GECCO proceedings, for example), and holds back wider progress.

Stochastic optimization has always been balkanized, but not because of a lack of methodology or benchmarks, but rather because the field was simultaneously invented in several different locations (Evolutionary Programming in San Diego and at NSF, Evolution Strategies in Germany, the Genetic Algorithm in Michigan). That's what happens in such situations: you get competition and differentiation when there really isn't much. Due to various political reasons, GECCO and CEC broke apart and GECCO itself decided to divide itself up by topic. In the meantime, alternative methods (ACO, PSO, various single-state "metaheuristics", etc.) have danced about at the periphery.

I think your criticism of benchmarks is much too harsh. First off, it's not really true. A number of areas in evolutionary computation have very well established benchmarks: certainly this is the case for genetic programming; and for vector representations (Rastrigin? Rosenbrock? Schwefel? The De Jong test suite? Griewangk? Etc.). Also multiobjective optimization has established a fairly common set of benchmarks. Second, much of the remainder of the field consists of different kinds of solution representations (ACO; various graph representations such as NEAT/HyperNEAT; list representations; etc.) and in such situations unifying benchmarks make no sense. It's like insisting that the Iris data set be used for problems in text mining.

I think there's quite a large degree of theoretical work among these techniques. Indeed there are entire theoretical conferences. But if you're looking for field-wide theoretical foundation, you're barking up the wrong tree. The problem is that most "interesting" solution representations result in dynamics which are essentially impossible to base a theoretical foundation on. In a real sense, various other fields have theoretical foundations because their problems are well formed. Stochastic optimization by its nature is tackling nastier problems for which there is no well-formed solution concept. The problems are ugly and hairy. This shouldn't reflect on the researchers brave enough to tackle them.
Flax HTML5 Game Engine Development Diary
My main gripe with Schmidt (in the way he is presented in the interview[^1]) is how casual he is about all the problems. You almost hear Steve Jobs's voice: "Change your name. Not that big of a deal".

I don't know what goes on in Schmidt's head, and maybe he is as upset about the predicament of today's youth with the vociferous cornucopia of information most people leave behind. Maybe he has come to terms with these reservations at some point, which is why we hear no lament, no reprehensions, no fear and expressed personal(!) feelings.

Nevertheless, he comes across as creepy because of this, be it as an automaton, a corporate CEO, or someone who knows that he at the very least wields the key to the cogs and gears of most of the information-aggregating monster - keeping himself out of harm's way.

I don't get a single vibe from him signalling that he finds the development troubling and at the very least wants to try to ameliorate the situation and development - as a private person and a corporate entity with a lot of influence. He seems to be welcoming the development. At the very least, if he has an moral fibre of independence, he is accepting it, and if he's indifferent, he's acquiescent.

The last person who casually declared privacy dead was Mark Zuckerberg. Go figure.

[1]: I want to emphasize this, because the structure of the article leaves no wiggle room for context and elaboration, which leaves Schmidt with the benefit of the doubt. And so I do. But Google is doing a [expletive] job at managing, building and recovering PR and brand value at the moment.

And the mindset construed from the article lends itself to the recent hubbub of Google's moral qualms of how far they should go to monetize and foster more ad revenue.
That's all very easy when the fundamental act is "kill someone".

What if the fundamental act is something you consider innocuous like "donate money to charity"? And the charity is at some point in the future considered by the gov't to be a funnel for terrorist activities.

Or perhaps you do multiple searches along the lines of "jewish traditions". And at some point in the future the gov't declares Judaism illegal, targets jewish-sympathizers and uses Google's data to identify them.

The point (I believe) of the "define illegal search" comment is that what may be considered legal or harmless today isn't necessarily non-criminatory tomorrow.

(On the other hand, there's no such thing as an "illegal search" on Google, so perhaps that was the point of that comment - regardless, my point stands)

In other words: Don't use the Google for anything if you don't automatically accept everything the gov't decrees today and tomorrow.

That is, effectively, what Schmidt is stating when he says "if you have something you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place". Which is also why that statement, in context, is just as creepy as Gruber states.
He's not creepy, just honest

There's a certain branch of honesty that's intensely creepy. It happens when someone is oblivious to the emotions of the people around them, and it's generally characterized by consistently being far too blunt, or dismissively laughing at something that frightens everybody else. Communication is as much about the emotion conveyed as the actual words. If Schmidt thinks it's just a matter of time before it will be the norm to ditch your identity for fear of embarrassment, he's creepy. He's especially creepy because he's dedicated himself to creating the technology that will force temporary identities.

The following scene was described in the fortune magazine article:

“All this information that you have about us: where does it go? Who has access to that?” (Google servers and Google employees, under careful rules, Schmidt said.) “Does that scare everyone in this room?” The questioner asked, to applause. “Would you prefer someone else?” Schmidt shot back – to laughter and even greater applause. “Is there a government that you would prefer to be in charge of this?”

A room full of tech journalists cheering and applauding a tech CEO for saying that he's the best person to know everything about everyone is about as creepy as it gets. It sounds like a work of fiction deliberately crafted to be creepy. But Schmidt is insensitive to how most people feel about privacy. He just thinks he escaped a tough question with a clever one-liner.
It seems our experiences have been quite different, but such is life. I'm certainly not claiming that there is no other valuable use for meetings than making specific decisions or determining the answers to specific questions. The briefing-style meeting I mentioned before is another kind of event entirely, and so is a review meeting of the kind you're describing. They should be conducted accordingly.

That said, FWIW, I found that there is a serious danger of groupthink in a review meeting if the participants haven't each taken a pass at the material independently before that meeting. There are always "loud" people and "quiet" people, and a good chairperson will be able to moderate that effect, but almost everyone seems to latch onto a trail of thought easily once the suggestion is there. That is the last thing you want, if you're trying to get multiple points of view on something during a review. In practice, I've found that can reduce review meetings to finding essentially those basic issues that a subset of the attendees would have found independently anyway, but lose the input from others. The upside is that sometimes you will explore the issues you do find more deeply, but you could do that either way.
Well, 24/7. That's simply too much. I had (well, still have) real-life problems that I not even closely think about 24 hours a day, all the week, for the last half year, and I don't get better in solving it. No. I'm slowly getting mad.
Of course we should make that presupposition - the US, EU, etc have the power to regulate it.
Well, it's implied that we're talking about hiring more workers. For an established firm, there are many options:

Leave money on the table. We're all familiar with companies that have died from expanding beyond their long term prospects or a short term down turn.

Get more out of your current workers; plenty are willing to work overtime for the usual compensation (obviously I'm talking about non-exempt workers).

Hire part-timers and/or contract workers.
Reading novels using an action game.  What do you think of this idea?
Alternatively, nearly all browsers support middle clicking on links to open them in a new window.
We need this for HN
Pretty amazing video. It's interesting to see how the people disregard safety while the machine is running. They walk so close to the drill. I can see what you meant if there were bugs in the software and the drill arm suddenly swung wildly.
But is there any real reason to believe that Schmidt's view of how things will be in NOT shared by google as a company (or even Sergey and Larry)? Perhaps that is precisely what google wants to achieve?
I was under the impression that the "Even More Plus Smartphone" plan was $39.99, but when I brought my new N1 into the store, I was quoted $30/month unlimited, no contract. I've been a customer since 2002 and have a family plan (voice and text) that expires in November. Maybe it's for existing customers?
There likely is a strike detector on the gantry and the arm the toolbit is attached to, so it is not quite as unsafe as you might think.

I agree with you though that they're not practicing proper safety and I've seen numerous examples of millwrights and machinists missing digits, eyes or worse.

A toolbit spinning fast enough will throw swarf around over considerable distances and it doesn't take much to take out an eye.

In production use normally there would be an enclosure and mandatory goggles. No 'walking around in the machine'.

Even the doors normally have interlocks, if they open it counts as an e-stop (emergency stop).
I got my Nexus One just after they stopped selling it. (bought a new one off eBay) and couldn't be happier with it.
Seeing the past in colour can be jarring. I just watched a documentary called Photographer (Fotoamator) about a batch of colour photos taken in the Lodz Ghetto in Poland during the Second World War. To contrast the colour photos of the past, modern footage of Lodz and interviews with a survivor of the ghetto were shot in black and white. It was disconcerting and very effective.
I'd agree with this. I was having problems with Quickbooks last week, so I tried some of the major online accounting services, including Xero, Outright, and Quickbooks Online. Of these, InDinero was my favorite. Though I still think they're going to have a hard time overcoming the chief advantage of Quickbooks - that my accountant knows it.
I agree -- artificial intelligence modeled on human brains hasn't been explored nearly enough to label it a failure. In addition to advances in artificial neural networks, there has been a lot of progress in more realistic models of the brain (specifically the neocortex). Artificial neural networks started the interest in "brain-like" modeling, but for a while, most neural networks were about as "brain-like" as a 100 component circuit is "computer-like"$ But unlike classical ANNs, new research such as HyperNEAT is exciting because it might reveal the mechanisms by which the wiring of the brain evolved into a structure capable of carrying out robust learning mechanisms.

Equally exciting is the research going on in figuring out the specifics of the learning mechanisms themselves. Research groups like the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience in Berkeley and the Center for Biological and Computational Learning at MIT (and many others) are making progress in understanding neocortical function and companies such as Numenta$$ are developing cortical learning algorithms based on specific mechanisms observed in the neocortex.

$ This example is from Jeff Hawkins's book "On Intelligence"

$$ Disclosure - I am working there this summer.
Do you know how fast it usually leaks?
http://howmanyofme.com/search/ is also worth checking out. As with your link, I can't personally vouch for its credibility.
Hehe aye, we called that a 'Spanish repair' after I'd seen the practice in Spain in a TV store. The guy there would drop the TV from 1", if that fixed it the customer was charged. Then from 4", if that fixed it the customer was charged.

After that from 1', if that worked the customer was charged and if it didn't there was no point in trying to repair the TV any more.

You can imagine the kind of trouble we had with the computers sitting in an enclosure right next to a vibrating CNC rig.

More than once I had to drive halfway across the country to re-seat a chip that had decided to go for a walk after jumping out of its socket.
Google Acquires Like.com
Facebook is a large website, but their product portfolio is small. Like I wouldn't say 3M, GE, HP, or even Google are small.
Sounds like a terrible idea to me. You're using your most precious (and expensive) human resources to do a task that doesn't require them. Part of the function of ITIL practices in the support team (assuming you're large enough to have a support team) is to notice trends in help desk calls and feature requests, condense that information, and present it to the development team in an organized, coherent manner. If that's not enough to keep your developers grounded in reality, send some of them on site visits once in a while to observe real users trying to do real work with your software.
Thank god Windows has the stupid and annoying file locking!
Zynga in Hot Water with San Francisco City Attorney Over 'Mafia Wars' Marketing
And Orderly[1] too...

[1]http://github.com/zaach/orderly.js
I have been known to occasionally attempt to persuade vegetarian acquaintances to eat some chicken on the basis that "Heck, the way they farm chickens they're practically vegetables anyway!"
Survey of Search and Replication Schemes in Unstructured P2P Networks
I am not affiliated with a non-profit, but need a legal site developed. Any interest in doing that?
I don't understand you.

By this I merely meant, "I don't understand what you are saying". Hope that was clear.
But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Small family-owned farms carefully raising high-quality cows, pigs, and lambs are a very good thing.

Sure! So can large farms owned by huge companies raising high-quality cows, pigs and lambs. And small family-owned farms raising crappy animals are a bad thing. I'm not sure why we should be focusing on the size and ownership of the farm at all.
Also, though we can detect which pigments were used on the statues we cannot determine the quantity. The degree of artistry, and perhaps subtlety, that was used to paint these statues is lost to us. We know that they were not plain, but beyond that we know very little of what they actually looked like.
I am not sure you used a full definition of prejudice there. For example wikipedia defines it as : A prejudice is a prejudgement: i.e. a preconceived belief, opinion, or judgment made without ascertaining the facts of a case and wordnet as _ preconception (a partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation)*

How is your definition of "prejudice" different from something simpler like "knowledge"?
In practice there is a big luck multiple in outcomes. Luck is a factor, for example, in whether you get the opportunity to deliver $x of wealth to customers.
Here's a link to CoffeeScript's Jison grammar. It's written in a small inline DSL (the "o" business at the top of the file) that makes it a little bit cleaner to add rules.

http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/documentation/docs...
I get goosebumps every time I read it, and I read it every time it is submitted.

You'll know that "head-in-hands" feeling if you've done it before, and it is quite the experience.

That's why this story will draw you back every time.
Using Gradients on Buttons Correctly
Even easier would be something that recognized that 00, 15, 30, 45 are going to cover most uses and thus made it a single tap to select which one of those you want (with the "more general please" option if you need it).
the article clearly describes how they used backups to turn an accidental deletion into a non-disaster, in 1986.
Paid subscribers only.

Here's a better (and older) link: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/12/e-ink-begins-sampling-col...
I was torn between an iPhone 4 and N1. In the end I chose Android because I wanted an experience more akin to a minuscule laptop than an appliance. Unsubsidized $30/month unlimited data and free tethering/wifi hotspot doesn't hurt.

My daughter has a current-gen (3GS hardware) iPod Touch that I love to borrow for gaming and exploring apps, so I'm familiar with iOS4. I've also spent plenty of time with co-workers' iPhone 4s.

I'm happy with the N1 so far, but the screen isn't as pretty as the iPhone 4. Better than the 3GS and more neutral than the Vibrant's SAMOLED, but still a close second to the iPhone 4.

But the biggest issue I have is the app marketplace. I have serious iPhone game envy. And to a lesser extent, app envy. I've seen many cross-platform apps (Gowalla included) that feel aesthetically half-baked compared to their iPhone counterparts. I'm happy to see Unity 3D, PopCap and Angry Birds on board, but I really wish developers/designers/publishers could put a little more effort into their Android ports. On the other hand, I suppose well-designed Android apps and games are somewhat of an untapped market.
Or, for laptops mostly, a combination of Ctrl, Shift, Alt + click will usually do the trick. (with the added benefit of choosing if you want to open it in the background or open it and see it right away, also true with middle-click)
Seems like pg's essay performed an inception on this guy already. :-)
For example, if your product or app is a game.

"I’m really busy right now but I’ll start using your GAME soon"

I'm sure every game developer would like to make a game that people play even when they can't afford to spend the time playing it, but because they don't doesn't mean their game sucks.
Will yo be able to create this? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1620874
Here's a different couple of reconstructions:
http://www.leica-microsystems.com/news-media/our-customer-ma...

I think the ones in the original article are painted on plaster replicas and the lighting is horrid compared to the professionally lit marble sculptures. It does seem hard to believe the artists would have caked on 'fond de teint' on the face and arms of the statue like in the reconstruction, without any subtlety, and losing all the lovely skin-like glow of marble.
The Google Unemployment Index
From the FAQ:

Do I need to be in Chile to apply?
No. Applications can be sent worldwide.
Do I need to be of Chilean nationality?
No. The program is open to entrepreneurs of all nationalities, including Chileans.
Ha, yeah. I realized that right when I finished. Somehow I don't think I'm the only one, either.
Interesting. The idea that gets spread around about anorexics is that they honestly believe themselves to be too fat, even when they're dangerously underweight. Are you saying that's not really the case? (It always seemed iffy to me...)
HTML5: Local Storage oddities & tips
HIJACKING localStorage

in chrome you can hijack basic functions in localStorage and then when they are called later, they call the replaced function.

localStorage.getItem = function(val){ console.log( val ); }
//function (val){ console.log( val ); }
localStorage.getItem( "truck" );
//truck
//undefined
localStorage.getItem2 = function(val){ console.log( val ); }
//function (val){ console.log( val ); }
localStorage.getItem2( "truck" );
//TypeError: Property 'getItem2' of object #<a Storage> is not a function

localStorage keys can be any unicode character.

for( var i = 0; i < 32000; i ++ ){
localStorage[ String.fromCharCode(i) + "_test" ] =
String.fromCharCode(i) + "_test";
}

localStorage does not have a prototype

but, Storage.prototype is the prototype for localStorage, so you can add methods there.

localStorage NAMESPACING

i am wondering how one should namespace content on the same page large data sets seem dangerous.

localStorage private keys
if a key starts with a character that is not property safe, it must be accessed via the array notation localStorage[key] rather than dot notation. using one of these chars in front of all of your keys could prevent you from overwriting key functions.

what are other localStorage hacks that you guys have found?
It sounds to me like you do not like doing work for others that doesn't fit a personal passion. If this is the case then I think you will be able to solve your problem by finding something you are passionate about, thinking of the problems related to it, and coming up with a solution.

There are manta business ideas that do not require a room of engineers. I'm an engineer and have many ideas, but the best method for finding the right one to work on for me is to add artficial constraints.

Take your constraints and turn them into a filter for ideas.

One of the best ideas vie had in weeks turned out to be an online business that requires only 2 pages on a website and an agreement. No real engineering work and I could do it in a weekend.

But what is critical about that idea is that it addesses a problem in an area that I'm passionate about in a very profitable and scalable way.

So, what are your constraints?
- you have a good job, no need to give that up right now sovfind something you can do two days a week, at least until it gets off the ground.
- you're not an engineer.... So either learn how to program- which you can do if you want. You mitt never be as good as a natural, but don't let that stop you. -- or find something that needs little engineering thatbp you can either get a friend or outsource or stumble thru yourself.
- you know a lot about business and your in Spain. What will the business community need in spain in the next decade?

Or find some other passion -- running, whatever. The most economical unsound hobbies still provide avenues for businesses even if it is making products to help other hobbyists.

You have access to a lot of stats... Are there things there that people don't generally know or realize? Trends to be exploited?

You are on the right track. Just dedicate yourself and look for the business that fits your situation. What makes it a startup is the business being a powder keg. But if you end up with a lifestyle business the first time out, don't worry, you will learn so much doing it that you'll wonder why you paid for and MBA!

You can always sell a lifestyle business to any umber of people whethe real startup idea comes around... Or take your time and find a powder keg you can light.

Either way, put your weekends into it, make it your passion, and quit your regular job when you're earning more from the side job than the regular one.