skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You have been most helpful. Thank you indeed.
Perhaps, only the pre-processor would be in a feedback loop with the early parts stages of the program life-cycle. Typically the linker and pre-processor are one way operations. In a developing organism, the environment feeds back on the cells developing and triggers new responses which causes new environmental changes which causes new feedback.

Biology is full of bizarre examples of when this process goes awry and our bodies have bizarre features. Dawkins's example of the Laryngeal nerve that makes a crazy loop down into the mammalian chest cavity is the classic example.
The $88 million server: private WoW server op loses big
In fact, some biologists have even written books on the subject:

http://books.google.com/books?id=lZcSpRJz0dgC&lpg=PP1...
Why Technology Fails--Shame on the New York Times
ThinkGeek brought the SWAT down on us.
Choosing a license for your next project
Well, it would by all means be awesome if we could build an intelligent system that didn't match the one we already have.

And we even have an existence proof that such a thing is possible, given enough design time. Unfortunately, the existence proof says nothing about the odds of doing so very quickly -- in less than, say, a million years, which is very quick by historical standards.
Now that's "early"! (The link above points to McCarthy texts from 1959 about Lisp)
I know, literally, nothing about ML. Why's it better for a beginner? Can you recommend any implementations in particular?

davidw above mentioned getting involved with open source - have you got any suggestions for how to get stuck in?

Thanks! :)

P.S. Do you think it's necessary to have a presence on the web, i.e. through a blog, in order to make connections with other kindly programmers? I'm also thinking that as I'm starting from scratch, I could record my progress and potentially help other baby hackers.
The Seductions Of Clicking: How The Internet Can Make It Harder To Act
Ha! I started out building dragon ball websites too. geocities FTW
Wasn't there an article on this a couple of days ago? Perhaps it was one of these:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1601253

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1601494

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1601706

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1602598

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1602986
Hard dependencies in your build scripts
Perhaps they should make cell towers look like a giant with a cellphone to his ear?
I've been using Remember The Milk as a GTD tool and I highly recommend it! Rather than moving your your tasks between notebooks, you move them between lists. The Gears/Chrome client is much faster than the Evernote desktop client, and there is even a Launchy plugin that allows you to insert tasks into RTM quickly straight from Launchy. There are also keyboard shortcuts, which make it even easier. Totally worth the $25 a year to get the iPhone app.

I always thought GTD was neat, but never had the gumption to create a physical filing system. RTM changes that by making GTD much more convenient.
but Ray's right that the brain cannot be more complex than the data that specifies it, speaking information-theoretically.

You're conflating two very different concepts of complexity here.

One is the complexity of a static state of information, and the other is the complexity arising from dynamical systems.

As roadnottaken pointed out, fractals are perfect examples of systems that are described by very "simple" formulas, yet contain infinite complexity. It could therefore be said that the simple equation of the Mandelbrot set represents infinite complexity.

However, if you take a particular iteration of the formula, then you can get a finite concept of its complexity, i.e. how many bits it takes to represent the image you're seeing.

So, to say that the "the brain cannot be more complex than the data that specifies it" is true in one sense, but completely useless in another.

To put this into terms of the Mandelbrot, you can gather up all the bits that represents some particular iteration of the Mandelbrot, but that doesn't tell you anything about how it works, or even how to generate the next frame. You need the equation for that.

That's just one place where Ray fails. The second is the lingering question of whether computers in their current state are even capable of "simulating" a brain. It's still not an answered question of what the role of the non-determinism found in Quantum Mechanics plays in the brain and the interactions of various chemicals. It was recently shown that DNA relies on QM entanglement to "hold it together". If it turns out that non-determinism and QM effects play a crucial role in biology (which they almost certainly do), then the very rigid and deterministic system that is the CPU may simply be incapable of simulating a human brain.
Funny that probably a lot of people make a living thinking in such a way, forming complicated theories of superstition.
So your definition of wage slavery is anyone who is not independently wealthy?
> capital punishment for drug offences
...

> the first crime is punished hard, and the behaviour doesn't re-occur.

Of course it "doesn't re-occur" -- the person is already dead the second time around ;-)
Form my limited understanding, it's simpler than it appears. It's a wire routing problem. Each neuron "knows" where it is going based on the proximity of its fellows, just as other cells know to become a liver based on who their neighbors are. Given a nascent brain, it is trained into an intelligence by external input. Neurons are pruned and connections strengthened.

As I see it, a significant problem is designing a substrate in silicon, or whatever, that has the requisite complexity. I would not be too surprised to find out that the layout program for an AI is not too different in complexity from today's largest software projects.
This is stupid. Of course video percentage will grow. Every time you double the resolution, you quadruple the amount of data you have to transfer.
"Instead, he seems to be using DNA as a measure for the amount of irreducible complexity that needs to go into a system that will end up with the complexity of a human brain."

And Myers is saying that DNA is a such a woefully inadequate measurement of complexity that it barely counts as wrong.
Are you kidding me? An airport is the last place I'd want to work. Expensive and crappy food, tired and annoyed people, and the endless noise of foot-traffic and zooming carts and loud-speaker announcements make airports one of the worst places on planet Earth.
Back when I wore my journalist hat I once got curious about one of these stories. I did the leg work and tracked down sources and dug up financial statements. I had imagined some tale of boardroom intrigue and secret back-room deals, but really it was just big egos and greed and inexperience. It was kinda depressing. I never wrote the story.
Thanks, I have been to a lab before and they said my snoring is not too bad. They wanted to give me medication against restless legs, but I didn't want to take it.
I guess he's been getting a lot of coverage lately.

But where the other guys raved about and admired what he did, I got into the details of how he did it. It's the kind of interview that would bee too detailed for a mainstream audience, but I think would be helpful to entrepreneurs.
I wonder what happened to Part 2?
Hmm, I think you're right!
I've never seen anything that makes me think 'Technical Analysis' of stock market indicators is anything more than a pseudoscience. It's fun and spooky, but is it any better than throwing darts?
New study questions whether Lou Gehrig had ALS
I doubt these pylons will last longer than society's memory ...
Predicting stock moves using satellite imagery
Hmm, looks like your mongrels are down. You're getting a 502 Bad Gateway! /trollface
> Also, you are stuck with the decision some developer made for your hash's efficiency trade-offs.

PersistentHashMaps are not slow. If you think they are, you can provide a custom defrecord with the same fields to the functions of the API and get the all perf benefits without breakage.

> leaving me with )]}]]}})) noise

Guess you never heard of paredit.

> Anyway, I would hesitate to call {} and [] an innovation.

Whatever floats your boat man.
Dynegy and the Evolving Nature of Deals
The media has very little memory. Anything past last week might as well have never happened.
Just because he's figured out how to spam Hacker News with his navel-gazing, amateurish blog posts does not mean you should listen to him. If he's too chicken to post under his real name and stand by what he has to say, then he's not someone I'm going to listen to. His posts are very trollish in nature. Stop giving him the attention he so craves and the traffic that is fueling his profits.

Update: Looks like "Max Klein" is voting this comment down using his numerous HN accounts. How pathetic.
I don't think you are correct in the US. In the US, you can make hiring decisions based on more or less anything you like except for race/sex/religion/national origin/military veteran [1].

So if I want to hire MMA fighters for a programming job (or give them bonus points, at least), I can do so. If someone doesn't want to hire me because I'm a former academic or because I stickfight, they also can.

[1] You can also get into trouble if systematic hiring criteria have a "disparate impact" on a protected class. I.e., if you hire based on an intelligence test, and a non-asian minority group or sexual majority group statistically does less well on the test, you can also be sued.
New player in the Q&A field - looking for a partner
I'm looking for a partner to help me to raise seed capital 200k to launch this http://alpha.beepl.com Alpha out in Sept, going live in Dec. PS - it's running off of a single 0.5GB server instance, it may be that the server is busy handling the traffic. Apologies for an inconvenience. Looking forward to your feedback.
Just because underlying structure is simple, does not implies that the system is predictable. For example consider the three body problem, it has simple structure yet there are known limitations on our ability to predict its configuration at a later time in future.

Just because a system has a finite description does not means we can predict its behavior at later time!!

The systems such as our brains are extremely chaotic, and even if we were to simulate it and write programs to change its behavior by altering the underlying code bit by bit. It would be akin to moving butterfly wings to generate storms.

also analyzing such a large system would be "at least" an NP complete problem, Assuming we can even recognize a solution [compile and run a modified genome] in P.
It sounds like the beginning to one of those 80ies barbarian movies (I'm thinking of The Beastmaster, which is a must-see):

"On the 10th day, the Omen foretold the coming Prophecy that the Evil Emperor would be slain by a Child born under the Star of the Omen"
I've read this article before, and I somewhat agree with it. However, java is a much more practical language to program in than c unless you're doing work where c is absolutely necessary. Programming speed is usually preferable.

What I don't agree with is pointers and recursion making people's heads explode. Pointers are just another language construct and with enough practice anyone will get used to them. Recursion is a mathematical concept. Thus, for all its elegance and simplicity, people still find it difficult in the same way they find mathematics difficult.

The real weeder classes that I've seen are generally theory and discrete math classes. The truly challenging systems and programming related classes usually aren't offered until the latter years of a student's CS career (such as OS, Distributed Systems, etc).

Disclaimer: My experiences come only with my university - Carnegie Mellon, and chatting with friends from others
My $10,000 iPhone/iPad game investment, yours for $500 USD
Selling

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/missile-o-mine-defender/id338323991?mt=8

Source code for $500 (non exclusive)

contact is

jimmy@inodesoft.com
...we'd need an impossible computer that could simulate years worth of exact quantum-level physics in a cubic meter of space...

...it might take a little more than the ten years to come up with any sensible code with hope of growing into an AI though...

Dude, you are all over the map.

... he seems to be using DNA as a measure for the amount of irreducible complexity that needs to go into a system that will end up with the complexity of a human brain.

At best, you could say it's a measure of the amount of irreducible complexity for an encoding of the required proteins. We don't seem to have a measure of the system, by which I mean the thing that models the relationships and interactions of the proteins (and their components) with each other and their environment.
Well, to take one question, someone who has a trust fund which will steadily pay out enough money for middle class class lifestyle for the rest of their life is probably "wealthy" but not rich (unless of course they set aside enough and wisely invest from that regular payout, or otherwise go beyond the obvious scenario).
All I know is that Adam, Gabor, Matt et al built a LOT of value for Xobni before they left. Good on them and good luck.
Don't Make Your Android App Free If You Ever Want To Charge For It Again
Interesting - thanks for the reply.
"People are really looking to make quick anonymous classes/structs"

What wrong with that? If you have the need for an anonymous map, then you use a map. If you have the need for a named map then you use a record. Clojure gives you both options.

"Also, you are stuck with the decision some developer made for your hash's efficiency trade-offs."

In that case you just use a different type of hash map. In Clojure you have the choice of the literal syntax (which by the way manages efficiency concerns on your behalf), the hash-map, array-map, or sorted-map functions, or records, or Java maps for interop, or you can implement your own if none of those options work.
Not inspecting packets is only the beginning.

I for one don't just want people to not snoop around my data, I want more or less unbiased service. Remember, Comcast would throttle users who were constantly uploading a lot of information, which by the way, actually is a pretty good indicator of torrenting.

This is the reason you can't just encrypt everything (edit: as other users here suggest). It goes deeper than that. It's not about people looking into your content, it's about ISPs having to provide the internet as it is, and not simply as they want you to see it.
Ok this is just wrong on so many levels.

It's trivial to create interface elements on the fly, even when using XML resources. You're not under any obligation to even define things using XML if you don't want to (and some more dynamic apps don't).

There are some issues with the way things are named (a spinner is not what you think it is), it's really a pretty small issue. I find the API's to be fairly well documented and fairly straightforward. A large amount of the standard Java library is available as well.

The app-store is a complete and utter mess and I think Google knows it. I fully expect them to address it in their next release (I hope).
Blizzard Wins $88 Million in Private Server Lawsuit
Some people are finding apps they want to buy. I've sold my games to thousands, and it just keeps getting better.

Sure, the quality of a lot of apps stinks. There seems to be a lot of trademark infringement going on, and I don't really understand the success of the emulators, but all that aside, many of us creating legitimate apps are making money - so people ARE buying apps.

Going back to the article, the main problem for me is NOT that I can't sell to some countries yet, it's that I want some simple and basic improvements to the Market. Market updates only seem to come along once in a blue moon. For example, I was selling for months before I was able to view comments in the Dev Console.

#1 update needed in my opinion: Let me write more than 325 characters to describe the game I've worked months creating.

For the most part, I'm grateful the Market exists and is so easy to use because it's helping to support my family, and I run a game company now... so, dream come true.
Thanx, I might actually try that for registered users.
There's also some discussion about it on arstechnica: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/08/the-88-million-se...
Do you think that more people are going to start encrypting their traffic because of events like this?
Hell... my current project took on money at something like a $4.5M pre-money valuation less than 60 days after we started.
Getting close would take an advancement in computer technology of the magnitude of the transition from vacuum tubes in individual boxes to a 32nm Core i7.

...so about 35 years? ;)
Hulu Is Said to Plan an IPO of More Than $2 Billion
Environment being another source of information was mentioned (in my 2nd paragraph), but interactions that are determined by their starting points don't add information - even if the result looks more complex. This idea (and the comment about the mandlebrot set) is similar to "pi holding all the information in the world" (assuming it's normal, meaning not repeating/regular) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1567225

Whereas the training data for a neural net is extra information - but in utero, what is the training data that is not a predictable consequence of the genome? (ex utero there might be an argument, since humans not exposed to language don't develop it; although a group of isolated humans have developed language spontaneously - complex grammatical structures, the whole bit - which makes sense, given the variety of human languages. This supports the idea that language is genetic, or as Pinker provocatively describes it, the language instinct).

EDIT here's a thought experiment to illustrate why predictable interactions don't add information: taking the figure of six billion bits for the whole human genome, this means it can specify 2^6,000,000,000 different genomes (a lot). You can imagine changing one single bit, and all those complex interactions leading to a slightly different human phenome. Most of the possible phenomes wouldn't be a living human, or even anything recognizably human (or living). But the crucial point is that you simply can't specify any other phenomes (apart from those 2^6,000,000,000). You've changed all the bits - what else is there left to change within the genome?
Greenhouse gases have nothing to do with the ozone layer. The ozone hole was caused by CFCs from refrigerants and spray cans.
The Three Types of Open Source
There're plenty of books, e.g. http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTML/ is very good. As a working professional with 15 years experience who has only gotten into strong inferred typing relatively recently I consider it a godsend; I wish I'd known about it from day 1.

Most of the popular languages have a beginners mailing list, so just join that, ask questions if you're stuck, answer questions as you learn more. To "get involved" in open source, solve one of your own problems, tidy up the code, upload it to GitHub or wherever and announce it on the list.
Excuse my ignorance, but i thought Ajax sends the whole page but only renders a part of the page?
Facebook Partnership Is Proven by $3,000 Check, Lawyer Says
Video: 8-Bit YouTube
Top 3 tips how to get your blog indexed fast by Google
Please, Take My Ideas
In other news, carrying squirt guns that look like shotguns onto school campuses also likely to get the cops called.
It's a win-win: You'll get qualified people that other employers are ignoring...

Not necessarily, if you account for time wasted on pointless interviews. Some networks/channels are simply better, and a better network causes you to waste less time interviewing fools. My company has been hiring, and I've found that the candidates who contact me through HN are of a higher quality than those we've found via recruiters.

If you recruit from a lower quality pool, you need to spend more time filtering out the chaff. Maybe it's necessary to avoid lawsuits, but it's not necessarily a win-win.
Maybe, if you consider the pre-processor to be, well, reality...
What the what? Averages over kinetic energies are summations. Adding them is well-defined and has a straightforward interpretation as the average energy per particle.

Formally, temperature is defined as

T = 1/(\partial(S)/\partial(E)) with fixed external parameters volume, particle count, etc.

where S is the entropy of the system and E is its total energy.

Playing fast and loose with words, as you pump energy into a system, if it becomes chaotic slowly, you're at high temperature. If it becomes chaotic quickly, you're at low temperature.

Much of the difficulty involved with calculating temperatures comes from the fact that we chose the inverse of that partial to be "temperature"--which means that you cannot add temperatures for most systems together and negative absolute temperatures are "hotter" than positive ones, (yes, Cindy, you can experimentally obtain systems below absolute 0 :)).

However, it is usually possible to calculate the thermal equilibrium of the system, which would be an excellent "average" temperature.
From the article: "Here are our picks for the hottest Web sites and Web trends of the year, plus some old favorites to enjoy."

I didn't mention traffic at all, just that Wikileaks has received a lot of attention (both positive and negative). It has undoubtedly been highly impactful in our society, government and media. With all the media coverage in the last couple of months, it seems like it would have been an obvious choice.
Thing is, human DNA seems to grow into human babies most of the time, yet at molecular level the environment where it grows is a random, chaotic mess. The rough physical properties, like temperature, and the general chemicals around are stable, but beyond that things are constantly moving and sloshing around in a very unpredictable way.

The idea with the three-body problem is that after some time has passed, we have utterly no idea where the bodies have ended up. Ova don't grow into random jumbles of cells, most of the time they grow into babies.

It takes a lot of very specific information to grow into a baby instead of some entirely different arrangement of proteins. So either the environment needs to be feeding some rather specific controlling information that makes most ova grow into normal babies, or the cellular machinery itself has a system which compensates for external disturbances and constrains the design to mostly what the DNA directs it to be. As far as I understand biology, it's mostly the latter case.
I agree that cults of personality are bad things. But dismissing someone as an evangelist and overrated isn't much of an argument either. It trivializes his very real and important accomplishments, and conveniently allows you to dismiss all of his ideas without looking at them on their individual merits. In short, ad hominem, and unwarranted.

Kurzweil has several functioning products that would have fallen into the mess you dismiss as nonsense two decades ago. Is he wrong on a lot of things? Yes. But so is any other engineer looking for things that haven't been done before. Even if Kurzweil has a spell where he does nothing of any merit for a decade (which has yet to happen) I'll still confidently say you're foolish to rule him out as a crank. He's earned his right to dream aloud.
In an ideal world, technical analysis tries to model psychological effects that are statistically significant in a population of humans. Don't buy just because you see a W, or crap like that. But if you understand why a W is an interesting pattern, and what it's based on, it can be a valuable signal to digest.

I don't know enough to trade purely based on technicals, and I'm not sure anybody should. But when I want to buy a stock I wait until it's oversold (http://clearstation.etrade.com/cgi-bin/details?Symbol=goog) That usually saves a few bucks.