skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Additional read:

"Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics, and Design"
By Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, sponsored by the Department of the Navy

In this report, we will present: the presumptive case for the use of
autonomous military robotics; the need to address risk and ethics in
the field; the current and predicted state of military robotics;
programming approaches as well as relevant ethical theories and considerations
(including the Laws of War, Rules of Engagement); a framework for technology
risk assessment; ethical and social issues, both near- and far-term;
and recommendations for future work.

http://ethics.calpoly.edu/ONR_report.pdf

and "Malak" by Peter Watts

Inside the mind of an autonomous drone with a conscience, but as usual with Watts it all goes wrong.

https://rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Malak.pdf
With this close proximity, isn't there a good chance we may be hit directly with the gamma ray burst ? Shouldn't we be alarmed about another possible mass extinction event ?
Yes, agree. I left for the same reason.

The irony is that the same mechanism that allows that content to propagate is also the perfect tool for eliminating it. Liked/reblogged the content? Banned.
The mistake in that definition is saying "rather than" rather than "as well as".
Where I work, been here for twenty years, and in all that twenty years I have been told we are going to do away with the mainframe which is a Z series. Of course we have been told the same about the i series which is actually larger. What have we done in the last year alone, gone to the Z-14 and a 32-way 870 i.

seriously people underestimate the cost to move off a platform that is working and worse when there are so many touch points no one can seem to get an accurate handle on them all.

IBM does indeed take their reliability seriously, both i and Z are all built around not having any downtime but the Z does do it better than i which still can require it for patches.

i just find it fascinating the work that we use these machines for and how instead of being replaced more work lands on them because of reliability issues of other platforms. That and support requirements of other platforms. The z and i teams are three man admin with a few operators to nod heads... the other platforms seem to have armies
The author says: "Note: in this work, we will not make any reference to why this (apparent) collapse occurs. Not only is this a much harder issue, it is simply not relevant to discussion we will present."

Also: "It is important to note that arriving at our conclusions did not require introducing new physics. We only relied on elementary quantum mechanics: not on novel ‘backwards time’ concepts, nor on any particular interpretation: we only used the Born rule ‘as is’. [...] With the remarks and intuition presented here, there really is no mystery whatsoever in any of the discussed experiments."

This experiment is not more mysterious than the rest of QM, but of course if you find the whole theory unsatisfactory you won't be satistified with this explanation either.
I agree your conclusion is undeniable, but I don't think conceptualising endless growth as mere 'resource' consumption quite captures the danger & tragedy of the physical processes involved.

'Economic'(1) growth, in real physical terms (forget the fake virtual world of the economist), is the transfer of matter and energy from our world's self-sustaining complex systems to crude, temporary, early-stage technological ones. It is the transfer of entropy to the complex evolved systems on which we depend, causing their dynamically stable states, developed over millenia, to break down. These living systems are dying, everywhere on the planet. Our extremely fragile global civilisation will not last long as crises of our home's destruction start to roll in.

Look at the convulsions caused in Europe by the feeblest of mini-crises in 2015. Far more is to come, and the consequences will be expanding waves of ever more intense wars and collapses of what passes for cooperation between nations.

We've allowed the propaganda of endless economic growth, fictionally severed from physics, chemistry, and biology, to be broadcast without challenge by corporate capitalists for too long to pull back now. People believe in it. It is religion (and by far the most dangerous fundamentalism in history). I think it's a done deal now.

(1) scare quotes intended here because the 'economy' is a Platonic fiction cooked up by fluffy-minded business folks & economists to make it seem like money floats, untethered, beyond physical reality. But it doesn't. Reality is coming back to bite them, and, unfortunately, all of us (where "us" includes the more-than-human world)
i think its one of the classic logical fallacies - you can't disagree with me unless you have a better idea. it's a false dichotomy in the sense I can think you are wrong without further explanation. unless there's expt evidence but most of this is opinion-based so it's not open to that sort of progress.
The problem is that even if they had only 5% in that fund, the way it was managed meant that they ended up owing more than was originally put in. Options (or at least naked? Ones) have unbounded loss. You can end up owing vastly more than you started off with.
This is an agency that still uses fabric-wrapped wire and vacuum tubes. Those people are far from unnecessary.

Though I'm sure the MTA will pay billions more in contracts over the next few years to halfway automate a few small parts of their jobs.
> If it's high, is it because you are getting 100,000 requests per second, or is it the frameworks you cargo-culted in?

Mine's high because our business model involves blockchain stuff, and

1. blockchain nodes are CPU+memory+disk hogs;

2. ETL pipelines that feed historical data in from blockchains produce billions of events in their catch-up phase. (And we're constantly re-running the catch-up phase as we change parameters.)

Sadly, we need several fast servers even without any traffic :/
I'm founder of the company and I wrote the post. I wrote it because despite a lot of negative comments our experience going to Linux has been a good one. Yet the 'fundamentalists' I mention tend to make proprietary vendors feel unwelcome. I believe this is bad for Linux. IMO a vocal minority are actively preventing Linux from expanding.
Night buses like London, they are much more efficient when there is less traffic.
I agree on the general concept of your post, however I cannot observe, at least for the things I maintain, that there is this pattern of "people starting small". At least not small in the sense of trivial changes. They maybe start submitting a small PR but that is most of the times already at the level of the contribution that they'll make in the future. So people that will become core contributors will send a small PR with a core change, showing already that they can understand the core of the system. However the open source movement cannot only optimize for the raw code output. The "I changed this" feeling is also great for users to realize that there is space for everybody.
When even the NYT is willing to implicitly criticize unions, you know it's gotten bad:

Even in the face of the financial crisis and budget shortfalls, the M.T.A. has given concession after concession to its main labor union.

Members of the Transport Workers Union got a total of 19 percent in pay raises between 2009 and 2016, compared with 12 percent for the city’s teachers union over the same period.

The labor contracts also gave members lifetime spousal health benefits and free rides on the Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road. (They already were allowed to ride the subway for free.)

Particularly insane:

Subway workers, including managers and administrative personnel, now make an average of about $155,000 annually in salary, overtime and benefits, according to a Times analysis of data compiled by the federal Department of Transportation. That is far more than in any other American transit system; the average in cities like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington is less than $100,000 in total compensation annually.
My bad I jumped the gun too soon. Sorry for that poor comment of mine :/
Walgreens, Humana Are in Preliminary Talks to Take Stakes in Each Other
> They defend against Facebook controlling the internet by offering an open source browser (Chrome/ium).

Imo chrome and android are about being able to ensure ads are delivered.
Hong Kong and Nanjing subway systems are spectacular. I dont speak or read the language and never once did I get lost because there are super easy to understand signs _everywhere_ and usually an electronic map that indicates the station you just left and the one you're going to, above all the doors to the cars inside. Never once gotten lost, embarrassed i can't say the same for BART.
It's not a zoned system. $2.75 gets you in, then you go wherever you want within the system.
There's no sudden flash sale. This has been there for about a year now.
they also work in two tone colors, so they don't ruin a billboard/leaflet aesthetic (even if there are a lot of reader out there that get confused by a white pattern on dark background code, even if the spec allows it)
It's not click-baity. Any headline like this can only mean "about to on a cosmological scale", and I understood it as such immediately, and I also felt excited, and the excitement was warranted because the news really is exciting.
It's on page 13 of the spec. Up to 27kb.
Failure to moderate the platform is exactly what's led to Tumblr becoming a haven for pedos.
So many of Connie Willis' books over time have had a healthy dose of running around missed connections. With the exception of her WWII period books, a young reader would pick up one of those books today and wonder why the protagonist couldn't just text whoever she was looking for.
A bit of everything. Some would use the term, "Jack of all trades". Others would just call me a PITA.
>- if you do make sure you can get out of your trade

You can't ever properly hedge writing options. Black-scholes zombies and "dynamic" hedgers refuse to realize that markets move in lurches not continuous functions.
Interesting. We read through all the legal documents when we bought our house (in Washington State).

The notary sat there as we did it, and it certainly didn't take multiple hours to do so.
... I have spelled out many times very clearly what theoretical physicists should do differently. It’s just that they don’t like my answer. They should stop trying to solve problems that don’t exist. That a theory isn’t pretty is not a problem. Focus on mathematically well-defined problems, that’s what I am saying. And, for heaven’s sake, stop rewarding scientists for working on what is popular with their colleagues.

It seems that some examples might be useful here.

Which specific groups are trying to solve problems that don't exist?

What are some mathematically well-defined problems that aren't getting enough attention?

As for rewarding scientists for working on what's popular, that's a science-wide problem that stems from the way that science is funded and decades of inbreeding. Still, examples of how to break physics out of its funk on this score would also be useful.
Out of curiosity, when was it the last time you checked on Free audio production tools? I know I didn't check for a while and was pleasantly surprised with the state of the current stack.
Without getting into specifics, some investors prefer separately managed accounts. It has nothing to do with difficulty of setting things up and everything to do with preference. That said, if for some reason I wanted to invest in something that sold naked options, I would prefer to invest with an LLC.
I think what everyone reading this story is missing and that the opportunity.

Betting someone clever on HN could invent a new signalling system for far less than $40 billion, perhaps $4 billion.

Once it's proven in New York you could roll it out anywhere in the world.
Dynamic configuration at Twitter
I don't see this ever being an issue, frankly.
An Idea of How People react to me:

1. All men are born whith the habit of mirroring. It's the way childs learn.

2. When people mirroring you, they mirror your inner fealings subconsciously.

3. When your personal fealings are in a bad shape people see it and do not want to share them by the automatic mirroring process.

4. So first at all find ways to get in an inner good mood, find peace and love in your inner selve and the people will want to mirror you.

PS: That is why smile allone is an bad advice. The inner mood they will mirror would disface every trained smile technique person.
The NYC system isn't composed of "zones" like the systems in such cities as London and Paris. Essentially, once you pay your $2.75 you're free to travel to any subway station in the system. There's also a bus system with limited transfers.
> I wonder if it’s possible to detect solar flares in these logs. Need to find a good data source for them. Are there any other events generating lots of radiation that may affect servers?

Cosmic ray showers [1] potentially. My prediction is that there should be "clusters" of bit errors every few minutes or so (given sufficient amount of servers...).

I was talking to a sysadmin at a local company running a few thousand servers about getting their ECC error logs in order to look for these, but scraping them apparently wasn't trivially managable for them.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_shower_(physics)
You just search for them and translate them by yourself? Or do you have some kind of publisher?
You've been watching too many movies.

Organized crime is way down, compared to what it was in the past. It just isn't a problem anywhere in America
It is as if you are also not reading my comment.

I’m not shifting blame. I’m sharing it. Look into some of the places the plastic grocery bag you “recycle” get handled. In some cases they are put on a ship and sent to India, sorted by hand, then melted using dirty fuels, again, by hand. So this “America takes care of its plastic, so India should too” is flat out wrong. We may not be as bad, but we do not handle our own issue completely. And if the US is sending your country their trash and doesn’t follow up with how it was handled, how is that not an incentive to do in the most cost effective manner possible, even if that means harming persons and environmental health?

Or let’s talk about clear cutting the Amazon for agriculture. How dare Brazil do that! Have you flown over middle America??? It’s all developed farm land. There are entire states that are basically monoculture agricultural where natural ecosystems used to be. Are you suggesting we return that land to its natural state?

Or let’s talk about electronics. Should we have jail time if you are responsible for purchasing a device without ensuring it was sourced in an environmentally responsible manner? Should people that purchased devices manufactured from raw materials derived by strip mining and processes that leach chemicals be given prison sentences?
Agreed. No one can know the exact way everything played out, but the warning signs are there for the savvy person willing to look for them.

However, I do wonder if their lack of caution may have helped their downfall to begin with. Housing isn't like tech startups. You can't just "grow at all costs" by hiring 50 employees and taking money from anyone and everyone.
The more-proper introduction to ReX.js
She learned that her opinion is valued. She learned that it's ok to question things. She likely had a sense, based on the activity that followed, that she effected change in some way. I'm sure it was explained to her, and while of course she doesn't understand what a kernel or source code are, she surely had a sense of some positive accomplishment.
Please don't post ordinary politics to HN. There needs to be an intellectually interesting angle to the story in order for it to meet the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I'm curious how docker will help with the "5 years on" problem. I'd be willing to place money saying your docker setup for this week will have trouble running "as is" next month. Especially true for the vast majority of one-offs out there.
Agreed. When the problems they try to tackle are orders of magnitude harder than...making Snapchat, you have to attribute their failure more to difficulty of the problem than incompetence of the people.
Their code generator makes codes that look quite pretty (if they're large). I imagine the patterns come from redundancy for error correction?

https://i.imgur.com/e0OrYZo.png
You do know that the 64 bit version of Windows XP was made for AMD processors before intel had any.

We also had Transmeta. I bet all of them have some kinks just as different models from the same vendor have different bugs etc. that require special handling.

Meltdown/Spectre is just a recent and very visible artifact that would demonstrate this.
Up to 31 miles: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/nyregion/10atrain.html
What an interesting thought...
Bit flips are real.
I used to see them on my (admittedly low end) webserver.
Eg. There were occasional errors like "myOfunction not found".
A quick glance on a ASCII table shows that the original function name "my_function" is indeed one bitflip away (0x4F vs 0x5F)
yes and no. I don't need polished stuff, I just want stuff made by hobbyists.
Yes, I was also confused looking for one of "those things [=]". I guess it was actually one of these things [-]. :D
Money talks I guess
I'm sorry for the destruction of wealth on one side, but the traders on the other side made a killing.

What happened here is fat tail risk that is always present in the market.
Considering how many structures from thousands of years ago are still around, I'd be shocked if there weren't any 21st-century buildings standing thousands of years from now.
Arm Delivers on Cortex A76 Promises: What It Means for 2019 Devices
It's a flat rate to get to any transit station in the city, no matter how far away. In NYC, the neighborhoods at the edge of the transportation network have historically been less wealthy, so this is a nice pro-economic mobility thing, and pretty unique among transportation networks. I expect people to say that this should change, but I think it's probably part of new york's secret sauce for economic success.
Many thanks for your answer.
Sounds about right. I've been a part of a radiation test giving a SoC gamma exposure for total irradiating dose measurement. I didn't see a single upset the whole test.
It would definitely be interesting to know more of the context around this code in Windows - when it existed, and which processor models would enable it. I'm pretty sure some of the x86-compatible processors made by several vendors over a couple of decades weren't ECC all the way through.
Keep in mind -- SNS is a push source for Lambda. When doing an approach like SNS->Async Lambda->...->Async Lambda it can become easy to saturate the event bus for your account.
I'm not actually developing UIs for web pages or using HTML, but rather using a game engine (which, honestly, makes the UI work especially tedious, and is a large part of why I'm looking for a faster way to iterate). Nonetheless, I expect your point stands about needing to test real code, and on making the job simpler for yourself.

Thank you for the reply. I'll look into Invision.
Also, an often overlooked topic of modern times, high speed internet pornography + chronic masturbation and its numbing effects on our neural reward system which makes things like eye contact and social activities unbearable and highly disconcerting.

This addiction isn't talked about much because it is almost a universal coping mechanism for guys beginning in adolescence, but you have nothing to lose in trying to abstain and see if your social anxiety melts away.

At worst you just determine that it's something else like depression and can go seek out a proper medical diagnosis. The crazy thing about the social anxiety inducing effects of chronic masturbation is that it is not taught in medical school and doctors do not diagnose or advise that it can be detrimental to people's lives, granted you are oblivious to the hormonal imbalances it causes w.r.t. neuroscience (orgasm induced prolactin release suppressing dopamine in neural pleasure/reward system).

Great Ted talk on subject:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU
Borjes' Lottery in Babylon explores that concept further https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lottery_in_Babylon
Except when conductors aren't needed or necessary. Having a fully autonomous rail system is a much simpler problem than autonomous cars.
SMAs are a common fund structure. It's a terrible idea for a strategy like this but for other strategies/asset classes where you either don't have as much potential volatility or drawdowns, I don't see the problem with them.
Outside pressure and assistance would certainly help, but change can come from within too. Ocean pollution is diffuse and hard to see the effects of, especially when you're participating in a developing economy and you've got a lot more pressing needs. River pollution is easy to see, and results in clear health hazards.

One of the sparks of the US environmental movement was when a river caught fire because of all the crap that was in it. [1]

Agitate towards cleaning up rivers and other water bodies; sewage, solid waste (trash), and industrial waste are pretty common, and they're all manageable; it just takes capital, sustained effort, and some amount of enforcement. Dumping is visible enough that enforcement in the court of popular opinion can be effective enough, when the courts of law are not enough.

Having clean(er) water will help with all sorts of health issues, the economy, and international relations (competition over water sources is lessened if downstream water is cleaner and more usable)

Keeping plastic out of rivers should also keep it out of the ocean; unless you just collect it all, and then ship it out on a barge and dump it; but even then, having built the collection apparatus, you'll be in a better place to deal with the waste responsibly later.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River
comcast also downgraded their entire lineup to a poorly re-encoded 720p. i think in the last few years.

there was some PR about it being improved this and uniform that.

indeed, the quality is now uniform: complete garbage. really defeats much of owning a good 4k sony :(. i wonder how many additional useless channels they added that no one watches.

at least their set top boxes have abysmally slow UIs.

https://forums.xfinity.com/t5/Non-X1-Service/1080i-channels-...
Is that in SF? We're talking South Bay here.

Ones I've visited in San Jose are were extremely underwhelming.
I see, thanks. Is any AI research center/company trying to model this idea, instead of applying RL?
> - which I believe is the case - then so is a naked goto. It's the cognitive dissonance of people who use them heavily while insisting that goto is absolutely evil, no exceptions, that irks me.

Sounds like we are in agreement then.
Thank you for this model of how to respond to a comment that maybe was more insensitive than intended.
The end of gp’s Article points to some work by a verisign engineer that put the network probability very low. So my interpretation was these but flips were happening on device before the network stack was dispatched at a url.
The myth of the male bumbler (2017)
At a first glance it seems like a step backwards from already established solutions like Thrift or Protobufs? What are some of the reasons you decided to go this direction?