skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
He's clearly very angry, I don't exactly blame him either.

The problem with the "climate change debate" is that it is a) political and b) full of bad science. The actual problem, of course, is that the bad science and the political happen, in this case, to agree.

To those decrying his strong assertions of fraud, I agree there is a little too much hyperbole in his resignation. However I think he is absolutely right that the money is skewing the science, as much as the politics.

What the scientists don't seem to understand is that a politician probably doesn't really care what happens in the future (so long as it does not happen in his/her lifetime) they are more interested in the political advantage it is offering. This is the same for pretty much any wide-scale "popular" crisis that occurs (e.g. the bird flu "pandemic").

And, so, we are in this weird situation where a very serious issue is facing us (well, facing us in a few generations) but most of the work seems to relate to arguing, using it to political advantage and scaring the public.

Rather than actually doing anything very much.

And the public have absolutely no idea what to believe, expect or do (except for some vague notion that maybe they should invest in a solar panel). The media have been handed the words "a scientific consensus" which confuses people even more, and means absolutely nothing. The media and the politicos have spun the whole thing into a mess of fear in the populace; who has this sense that there is a major urgency and we should be panicking. When clearly, that is a silly response.

The truth, sadly, is that nothing is at all clear at this point, apart from the fact we are seeing some form of, probably quite significant, climate change some portion of which is out fault. And only a developing sense of what to do about it and what it will lead to (environment wise). Anyone who claims to be able to predict the outcome, from this point on, with any degree of certainty I am quite happy to call a fraud. Ditto for anyone that claims conclusively to have shown the extent to which we are contributing.

We end up with two polarized camps; the "global-warmists" and the "deniers". And we are all supposed to take a side, choose our weapons and go for the throat. Which in itself detracts from sensible, logical ideas like self-sufficiency, less consumerism, clean energy, sustainable environments etc. (because they become part of the whole debate and no longer just a neat thing we could/should all do).

This makes me very cross (can you tell), but I have given up waffling about it too much (this post excluded) and simply invest in my own sustainability and remain healthily sceptical about any new GW science.
stitching?

http://hugin.sourceforge.net
>By the time we know who was right, it'll be too late.

Only if Climate Change is correct, not if it isn't.

>critics should be proving that something else is causing the recent heat records.

Hal addresses that in his letter.

>or that some esoteric and uncontrollable phenomenon is responsible for some of the warming does nothing useful to help us decide how to act.

It does a great deal useful, in instructing us how not to act. Science is as much about process of elimination as anything, and eliminating hypotheses is one of the most valuable outcomes of scientific method.

The problem of induction comes into play here - thousands of confirming observations cannot prove a theory true, but one single refuting observation can disprove it. It could be rather embarrassing when governments have invested billions, and top scientists have based their lives and careers on, proving it true, and it were to turn out false due to a few refuting observations.

Another problem here is that too many people have worked themselves into a tizzy of thinking we must solve the problem immediately, even if our understanding of what exactly the problem is may not be accurate. Given the lack of full transparency, sloppy data handling in some cases, and what appears to be a biased, corrupted process, it's hard for interested lay people to trust the accuracy of our understanding.

Don't misunderstand, I personally think we're trashing our world and need to do something about it. When the Amazon Rain Forest is vanishing and there's an island of garbage the size of Texas drifting around in the northern Pacific, we've got clear, systemic problems that need to be solved.

And that's not to mention another extremely strong reason to transition away from fossil fuels - self reliance. Having to be constantly at war, either hot or cold, to protect the energy supplies that allow a modern economy to run is about the most undesirable political situation you could possibly have.

Trashing the world + self reliance should be enough justification for government to strongly incentivize solutions, without resorting to a complex, difficult-to-prove, scandal-plagued theory like AGW. And solving those clear problems may even have a side effect of mitigating AGW, if it is indeed correct.
We live in amazing times if a woman can have her 6th child at 46, I assuming both the mother and the child are completely healthy.
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> “The board chose Léo because he was the best available athlete.”

Athlete? Spell-check gone awry, or does "athlete" have some sort of metaphorical usage in corporate management?
Beyond bull, the article doesn't even come close to making sense. They predict a 3% drop in 'computer programmer' jobs over the next decade, but a 32% increase in 'computer software engineer' jobs over the same timeframe. Futher confounding the issue, the distinction they draw between the two is "computer software engineers [are] the guys who write the software" while "computer programmers [are] the guys who write the instructions for the computer to use that software". I have no idea what they think that means their version of a programmer does, or how it's supposed to be different from a software engineer. At worst, it looks like 3% of the programmers in the US will have to change their job titles to software engineer and start writing software instead of writing instructions... or something.

(As a side note, did anyone else notice that programming was the only profession in the list that was explicitly gendered in its description?)
The fact that he has accomplished so much makes his opinion more relevant to me, and certainly much more relevant than random commenters on the internet.
I think more interesting than the question is the fact that the questions was asked at all, by a company to the customers.

I'm a customer of getclickys and in most cases openness like this would be refreshing and it is but there is an element of 'flying by the seat of our pants' that could come across with this post.
The captcha is still there. They bring it up with javascript after hitting "Create my account".
Imagine if marijuana were farmed using truly modern big-agricultural techniques. The price would be significantly lower, so even if you added on a nice profit for the company and a tax it would likely still be cheaper and significantly higher quality than black market product.
The shuffle UI shouldn't get longer to load as you spam the button. There's a self-cancelling delay from the time you click shuffle button until the frame loads so that when people click through super fast that the frame doesn't try to load each one. Within 300ms of letting up on the shuffle button the frame should begin loading no differently. Can you describe what happened in more detail please? (also do you remember the site that it loaded that was slow for you)?
The first few years the premium would probably be much higher, especially since these would be luxury cars and you just know there would be attempts to fool the cars into compromising situations (or simply steal them). After the adoption curve hits the early majority the premium balance will shift the other direction (you'll pay more if your car doesn't have the safety feature of being able to drive itself). And at some point it will (assuming that automatic cars are in fact safer) become illegal to operate a vehicle manually on a public road unless it's an emergency.

Also fully automated taxis start to look like a mass transit system, and if Zip car offered to pick you up at your house...
I'm sure that if the people had a say (ahem, or should I say pooled their money to influence politicians in the same way lobby groups do), these agreements would be much more reasonable than they are now.
You didn't overreact. Apparently there are a lot more people on this board who are insensitive to what Hitler represents than I would have given it credit for. Very disappointing
Matters Computational: Ideas, Algorithms, Source Code [pdf]
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As a libertarian, you might find it useful to consider some meta evidence. Those supporting global warming and who have been pushing for this are generally politicians such as Al Gore and the IPCC. Those opposing it are generally business interests, presumably the oil producers if the pro-AGW people are correct.

Businesses make their money by keeping their employees, their customers and their shareholders happy. Looking at the history of pollution from a geographic perspective on a global basis, the worst polluters are generally governments and countries where there is low standard of living or slower economic growth due to un-libertarian political government. Richer, free-er societies tend to have less pollution. Anyway, contrary to businesses government operates by edict and uses force to ensure compliance. Corporations can only plead or incentivize, governments can force. But in order to avoid rebellion, governments must make their subjects believe that they are being force to "do the right thing".

In every area of life where there is government you can find propaganda saying that government control is the right thing. The Global Warming movement originated with government, government controls the purse strings and refuses to fund people who find evidence that does not support the political position, and thus this is simply a case of governments doing the propaganda thing to be able to pass laws that give them extraordinary control over their economies.

Since reading all the papers is admittedly a non-trivial affair, consider the motives of the groups.
I assume this is sarcasm, but perhaps not. If Google is developing this automobile technology, perhaps it should enter and promote telecommuting technologies to reduce the amount of time that people are in their cars?
I think it's more likely that someone high enough up though it was "cool", decided how "cool" they thought it was (1M? 10M? 50M?) and then approved the project.
Firebug showed me over 400 http requests just for that one article. I wonder how that guy from Russia a few days ago feels about this site?
And they spray the inside of the car with that authentic cabbie "scent."
Alternatively, I have a 6 month old and I'm only 26. I'm glad I had him early: being up late has allowed me to work on my startup and maintain a full time job. I'd love to be independently wealthy by 35. He'd be set up for life, and I would have plenty of time to spend with him and pursue other ventures. No way I'd want the burden of a child at age 50.
> Imagine if your car had a safety mode that could watch out for potential accidents and prevent them even with a human driver.

Well, if my car would do that I'd certainly drive to the bar more often. I'd want the fully autonomous "drive me home, Jeeves" system though.
Please call those who disagree with AGW theory "skeptics". The use of the word "deniers" is pejorative, and seems meant to imply they are "denying reality."

His use of the word "fraud" seems well supported considering the amount of scientific fraud that has gone on here, to such a degree that you, for instance, appear to be open minded but generally unaware of the evidence against AGW. (This is not a criticism of you, just using you as an example of the type of information that gets out.) Further, the actions in climategate, which involved adding an artificial factor to create warming, are fairly considered to be fraud. If this factor were known and the full data were presented to people, then it would be good science as it would be attempting to compensate--- but then I'm being very generous because I believe a fair assessment would show the factor is not based on science but based on a need to show warming.
Sorry, I thought it was editable by default. Some people said that google docs are not really suited for this, so I nuked the doc.
For the $140 setup fee, I better own that SheevaPlug after I discontinue service... I would feel pretty ripped off if I didn't, and they just handed 'my' SheevaPlug to the next guy that was paying the $140 setup fee.
Fatuous. Charles Coughlin --- for all intents/purposes the picture accompanying the dictionary definition of "dangerous charismatic" --- wasn't a crook. He kept his spiel up until he died of old age. No doubt there are many other counterexamples of "honest" demagogues.

This is the country that produced both Grover and the Old Spice ads, and then managed to combine the two to teach vocabulary to preschoolers, just this year, despite Limbaugh. I find it hard to be too cynical about it.

http://youtu.be/zkd5dJIVjgM
Well he was a major player in european politics for over 10 years. I know my history - the point is that hitler had an overwhelming influence on the 30's and 40's in europe and touched a disproportionate number of topics from 1933-1945
> ...is there anything people resent more than driving?

I for one absolutely love driving; it's the traffic-filled commutes to and from the office every day that I resent. If I could optionally automate the driving for times when I don't want to be driving, ie, in highway traffic jams, on long road trips, or when I'm tired, then I would gladly pay extra for the option.
Yes, his name is Larry.
I sadly feel we'll never have cars that drive themselves.

The first time, ever, one crashes, regardless of the circumstances: "COMPUTER DRIVEN CAR DEATH! DO COMPUTER CARS MAKE YOU UNSAFE?" is shouted from the media rooftops, citizens get outraged, laws are passed, and we're all doomed to sit in traffic and continue to lose many lives to manual driving forever.
Sorry, in case it is not clear I am personally sceptic of a lot of the global warming science [but not climate change, gladly there is at least solid factual information there]. I did deliberately put deniers in quotes :)

The fraud bit I was referring to other posts in this thread that were talking about monetary fraud. As I mentioned, I agree there is a lot of bad, often fraudulent, science going on in this field.

And yet, as a sceptic, I don't see why, for example, sustainable energy is a bad idea. Or why it is even part of the debate, rather than standing on its own merits :)
Dr. Thrun is known as a passionate promoter of the potential to use robotic vehicles to make highways safer and lower the nation’s energy costs. It is a commitment shared by Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, according to several people familiar with the project.

It sounds like this may be as much an idealistic pet project as it is any kind of corporate strategy.
A lot of enterprises could store all of their non-image/multimedia data on a single 160GB server. This could be particularly true of illegal enterprises.

A bunch of SheevaPlugs connected to 2G or 3G wireless could be used to host a distributed low bandwidth "darknet" against the wishes of a local government. A simple peripheral with a mercury switch and a very limited UPS capacity could hold a symmetric encryption key for the hard drive. Movement of the physical device could trigger the erasure of the encryption key, requiring human intervention to restart, reformat, and reconnect the SheevaPlug to the darknet.
Is "as seriously as possible" a satisfactory answer? This stuff isn't easy ;)
I Have No Pedal and I Must Brake
Wow. Way to not pay attention.

It's not that Sorkin didn't "manufacture a prominent female character." It's that he manufactured lots of other things about the founding of Facebook, Harvard culture, and Zuckerberg's motivations that all lead to a movie in which women are, across the board, portrayed as stupid slutty airheads who exist solely to serve as prizes for the awesome hackers.

To choose some examples at random: much of Zuckerberg's motivation in the movie come from his bitterness over being dumped by a girlfriend (...a fabricated girlfriend), which led him to make a site to let male students compare the hotness of female students (...modified from real life: facemash compared both men and women; the objectification overtones were far less substantial), which led to blow jobs from personality-less groupies in bathrooms (I can't speak to that, but it would surprise me), while being jealous he couldn't get into to final clubs that featured naked girls dancing on tables, having been bussed in by those final clubs for that purpose (I don't know if Zuckerberg wanted to be in a final club, but I can tell you that the rest of that clause is pretty much entirely fabricated, except for maybe the existence of the bus, which is probably referring to the shuttle that runs between Wellesley college and Harvard square).

I don't have a problem with movies being fiction, I'm just a little confused as to why this story had to be fictionalized in such a glaringly misogynistic way, especially given that A) there's no evidence that Zuckerberg hates women and B) the story is pretty interesting on its own.
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>* Thou shalt not host IRC servers

Thou shall be permitted to run IRC clients (and bnc/eggdrop)*

d'awww. Any reason why not?
The most awesome thing is how such a dead simple thing could become so successful. Most people who do that kind of stuff see 13 users in their app, over its entire lifetime, and that's including their own mom. Anyway, congratz dude!
It will take a decrease in sensor costs for this to become commercially viable. The "device" on top of the car is a Velodyne LIDAR system, which if I recall correctly, costs around $75k. Using a sensor that costs more than the vehicle it controls makes selling this difficult, to say the least.
My position is that the initiation of force is immoral. So, if all the Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley think that there is something going in the green energy sector and they want to pour a bunch of money into it, more power to them.

Unfortunately, I suspect that the recent popularity of this sector among them is more to due with the expectation of buckets of cash coming from government than seeing a viable economic model to exploit.

Viable economic models work to improve society, and they produce profits that turn around and can be invested in a variety of potentially viable technologies and economic models. It is a virtuous cycle.

So, in that context, I also am in favor of "sustainable energy" as well. I just have a problem with government sticking guns in people's faces, taking the money they would have used for their babies medicine and giving it to someone who created an politically favored business in order to get government money.

I'm not saying your position is any different, just that when government gets involved things get confused. People forget that there is a huge difference between VC money and government money.

Also, I apologize as it seems I misunderstood your use of the word "deniers".
They're already trying with at least Google Docs and Google Voice in Gmail.
What are the use cases for this device which are not covered by either (1) an EC2 "micro" instance ($82 up front + $0.007/hour * 3 years * 365 days * 24 hours/day == $7.38/month) or (2) a small form factor server in my home? If we ignore the toy/coolness factor of having such a small form factor device, are there any compelling use cases? I can't think of any.
I suppose if your goal was to let people keep as much money as possible, then sure -- don't tax them on anything. However, voters have accepted a certain amount of self-inflicted pain in exchange for services that the private sector can't or won't provide. However, generally speaking I don't believe the government is a particularly efficient means of reallocating society's capital, I'd rather give entrepreneurs in the private sector the chance to do it better.
Issues with that:

* 2G or 3G wireless would be attached to someone's account (i.e. associated with a person).

* The authorities could just access the contents of the drive to see what is on it. (though this would obviously mean infiltrating the darknet)

It would probably be easier to setup something like this hooked into the internet at some private business. Stick it under a desk or above the ceiling tiles and just plug it directly into the local network. That way they would have a hard time proving who put it there (unless it was hooked into something that required special access.... but even then if you could gain access without being one of the people that has access, it would throw them even further off your 'trail').
My comment was nothing personal about you, but about the industry at large.

While I've been programming since I was a kid, my academic background is in history - Viewing the industry through that lens reinforces how it's collectively in an early phase where people still fall to their deaths trying to fly with wings made of wax and feathers.

There have been plenty of people with real breakthroughs, but the average programmer probably hasn't even heard of them. I mean, their work is already obsolete, right?

See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1743145
Being skeptical is one thing, categorically dismissing each and every finding of fact as cooked up to manufacture a story that has not rational basis is quite another.

Everybody is entitled to their opinions, but not everybody gets to have their own facts.

Global warming is not a theory, it is a fact, enough evidence that is beyond reproach of any kind is left that we can safely conclude that this is apparently really so.

What remains is whether - and if so to what extent - we are contributory to this and regardless of whether we are if this is something that we can do something about it and if we should (assuming that we can).

Conspiracy theorists reject the whole thing out of hand and make it seem as though all of it, evidence included was made up. That puts them right out there with the people that don't believe men ever walked on the moon.

There are conspiracy theorists on both sides of this debate, and somewhere in the middle you will find people working hard - and not all of them because they are on the payroll of an institution with an agenda- to try to find out what is really going on.
>just that when government gets involved things get confused.

Agreed. Because the government is not really all that interested, at the end of the day, in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

> Also, I apologize as it seems I misunderstood your use of the word "deniers".
My fault. I used "global-warmists" instead of "alarmists" because the word slipped my mind. So it does look like I come down on one side of that sentence :)
So because the british committed atrocities through policy decisions over the course of several centuries, I shouldn't be offended by cuddly representations of hitler - a man that presided over the slaughter of several generations of both my jewish and non-jewish extended family? Is that what you're saying?