skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The main problem with SNNs is not that they don't work well. It's not that they are slow to run on CPUs/GPUs. Those would indeed be temporary problems. The fundamental problem is we don't know the right abstraction level to imitate brain operations. It's far from clear that simulating spikes is necessary to implement brain's "learning algorithms". There are two main arguments for using spikes: "biological realism", and "energy efficiency". Neither is convincing: if you want to simulate a conventional CPU you don't want to simulate IV curves for transistors. You don't want to simulate CMOS gates. No, because the lowest abstraction level necessary to understand the computer operation is boolean logic. Anything below that is completely irrelevant. I strongly suspect that simulating spikes is below the lowest relevant abstraction level. By the way, Jeff Hawkins of Numenta agrees with me, and he's pretty strict about "biological plausibility" of his neocortex algorithms. As for energy efficiency - sure, spikes might be the most efficient way to compute and encode information given the constraints of biological brains. But why should we care about those constraints? We are building computing machinery in silicon, using vastly different technology, circuits, and tricks from what's available in "wetware". It does not make any sense to copy biological evolution tricks to improve efficiency when building things in silicon. Neuromorphic hardware papers always mention energy efficiency and then proceed to compare their analog spiking chips to digital (!) chips. That's ridiculous! I can't think of a single good argument why would spiking analog circuits be more energy efficient than non-spiking analog circuits, if we are talking about any existing computing hardware technology (or one that's likely to be developed in the foreseeable future).

Deep learning took off in 2012 not because faster hardware allowed us to develop good algorithms. The algorithms (gradient descent optimization, backpropagation, convolutional and recurrent layers) have been developed -- using slow hardware -- long before (Lecun demonstrated state of the art on MNIST back in 1998). The fast hardware allowed us to scale up the existing good algorithms. I don't see any good algorithms developed for SNNs. Perhaps these algorithms can be developed, perhaps faster hardware is indeed necessary, but as I argue above, the motivation to pursue this research is just not obvious to me.

Note that we shouldn't confuse this SNN research (such as the papers you cited), to efforts like Human Brain Project, where they're actually trying to derive higher level brain algorithms from accurate simulations of low level mechanics. Emphasis on accurate, because as any neuroscientist will tell you (e.g. [1]), these SNNs have very little to do with what's actually going on in a brain on any abstraction level.

[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/devices/b...
Super-Hearing Helps Owl Hunt with Insane Precision
I asked a few days ago if LFS was still a great way to learn internals, build a minimal bistro, etc: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20149111
it can't be too hard to find somebody on fiverr to do it for a cool $5.00
> If you go with most languages definition of "slice", that would be pretty horrible just by itself.

Most languages don't have a definition of "slice" at all.

> What would be pretty much like Java's ArrayList, or Python's list if it was designed on a sane way. So, just the name would be non-standard... But the container actually migrates when it is reallocated! That's a broken design in any language.

It's not broken, it's just fast and simple. But yes, it does require you to know that Go's slices are not exactly Python's lists (which do gratuitous copies). Java's implementation does an insert on the original list (both surprising and an unnecessary copy).
What makes you think anyone limits their computer to run only one core? I'm flabbergasted.

Many people choose the CPU that has the highest single core performance, for both gaming or real-time multimedia processing.

Games are usually optimized for a single core, or a low number of cores, not to use all 4 or 6 or 8 cores of a system. Therefore, for gaming single core performance is still very important.

You can read some opinions about people still choosing Intel because of single core performance in this very discussion.

Additionally, modern CPUs move running threads among cores to avoid a single core from overheating. It's a strategy for thermal management.
Did you read the last part of my statement "to ensure that it is decentralized"?

True decentralization at this level is why it is valuable
After a lot of heat was applied, Google backed off and acted like the world misunderstood their intent. But they sure tried. Meanwhile, Mozilla increased the default privacy level of Firefox.

Which sounds more trustworthy?
15:00-18:00 is unreal. What the hell?
the entire govt is a sort of scam...I should know--i recently retired as a fed govt employee...they create more regs and rules etc so as to give themselves more to do...and don't even think that it can be reformed...it cannot...breakup of the USA is the only way to go about this..
>Isn't this sort of thing expected through the process of developing cutting edge hardware and software?

To a great extent, that's the fundamental problem with the F-35 program - it's a technological showcase first and a useful weapons system second. It has been designed and commissioned by people who believe that "most advanced" necessarily means "best" and who are indifferent to the actual tactical and strategic requirements.

The Army and Marines have been crying out for years for a suitable replacement for the ageing A-10. It's the finest close support aircraft ever made, it has a legendary reputation among infantrymen who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the USAF are still planning on retiring it in favour of the F-35, an aircraft that is simply incapable of performing the same role. Even if the F-35 were inarguably an excellent aircraft, it's the wrong aircraft for a vitally important job.

The F-35 helmet is a $400,000 showcase of AR technology, capable of providing unprecedented levels of data to a pilot. It's also really bad at being a helmet - it's so heavy that it could literally break the neck of smaller pilots during ejection and so bulky that it limits visibility. Test pilots have mixed views on the usefulness of the AR cameras, but they all want the ability to look over their shoulder. It's maybe possibly better at doing a thing that nobody asked for, but it's demonstrably worse at being a helmet.

Servicemen don't want cutting-edge innovation - they want weapons systems that work reliably in the field and provide useful combat capabilities. That's what you need to keep in mind when you hear the DoD hype the F-35. We know it's a hell of a lot less reliable than existing US aircraft and competing foreign aircraft. We know that the one-airframe-to-rule-them-all model is deeply flawed and leaves serious gaps in the combat capability of the US military. What does the F-35 actually offer in the field that couldn't be provided by a cheaper, simpler, more reliable weapons system? I've yet to hear a good answer to that question.
Zero day is almost always used in the context of “the bug was unknown and first seen during an attacks”.

The alternative definition (that zero day means purely day of publicizing) would mean that if you had two bugs in a product and you notified the vendor of one. Then three months later published both, they would both be zero days, and should be treated as such.

A 0day means publicizing a bug without the vendor themselves having the potential to have a fix.

Very simply: if a virus comes out attacking a known but unfixed bug in MS software no one would call it a zero day. Every article would say it was a bug that Microsoft knew about but hadn’t fixed.
public alcohol usage is very much legal. we manage it by providing regulations on dispensing/selling alcohol. in my city alcohol may be consumed in most parks and in the majority of municipalities it is legal to serve alcohol in public establishments meeting basic business regulations.

alcohol of course, is a deadly and addictive drug that increases incidences of violence, property crime, and other anti-social behavior.
My personal anecdata is that I've never worked at a place where I couldn't trivially exfiltrate real user data and source code without being traced. This is 20 years across defense contractors, banks, insurance companies, etc.

I understand your argument and in principle I agree with it, but in my experience nobody cares all that much about the data on the primary network, so creating a second network that grants devs things like local admin doesn't seem to increase risk by much.
>Besides, where in the Constitution does it say that's allowed?

Where does it say you're allowed to breathe?
Beef is not a homogeneous substance. It contains many constituent substances, just like the Beyond Burger contains ingredients, and many of the constituents are analogous to Beyond Burger ingredients, which is why the taste is so close.

It's also made of whatever the cow consumed, and depending on the source of the beef, that can vary a great deal.

Also, the human body is very resilient as to the source of its nutrients, as long as it gets those nutrients in sufficient quantity and balance.
Neo-nazi received donation of 14.88BTC from anonymous Bitcoin wallet worth $25M
For me its probably not the taste, just an aversion to the concept.

And the thought of gristle makes me want to vomit.
Exactly.

P2P systems historically have dealt with the problem altruistically, or with limited tit-for-tat, which both work in many cases, but have so far failed to work for large scale long-term resilient systems.

This is where Bitcoin managed to do something remarkable: achieve high uptimes typical of the best centralized systems, through a very clever, but still open and permissionless, economic incentive structure. Markets have been shown to be extremely useful to create a robust Open Services. More on these ideas here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfLIoOr4p0A -- we think this kind of thing is going to lead to extensive, global, public utilities run w/ internet-native money.

But it will take a while-- this stuff is extremely difficult to build right now-- it feels similar in nature to very early Web, or pre-unix systems. Lots of hand-rolled primitives, many with the capacity to cause serious failure (not very old cryptography, and complex security questions). Perhaps better programming languages will help us build these systems dramatically faster/easier. For now though, you can see the entire blockchain space wrestling with these problems.
100pcs Winter Wheel Lugs
There has been no president in any of our lifetimes that hasn't lied shamelessly.
Decentralizing how we link, address, and move content is the basis of IPFS and Filecoin both. Both are solving different parts of moving our digital infrastructure to infrastructure that we control, that we govern, and that we are not held hostage by.

While we still have a long road to go w/ IPFS usability, it’s worth pointing to what works today -- there are millions of end users benefiting from IPFS, 100Ks of libp2p nodes, we see PBs/mo of traffic in the infrastructure that we run, and millions of daily requests to our gateway. Look to fully decentralized applications and systems like OpenBazaar, Textile, Dtube which use IPFS and paving the way. New technology -- especially new technology that seeks to build new platforms from the ground up -- is hard and extensive to build, and to polish. We’re working on it, and though nowhere close to where we want to be yet, there’s a lot of utility already provided.

Re Filecoin incentive structure -- this comes from recognizing that computers are not all the same -- there is huge utility to be had in dedicated infrastructure running 24/7, well maintained, high performance spread out around the world. P2P systems of the past have failed to match the reliability, uptime, and performance levels of centralized systems. Cryptocurrencies enable the creation of Open Services (like Bitcoin) that run public infrastructure w/ high uptime and reliability guarantees. With Filecoin, we aim to bring that to file storage and distribution. More here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h2WNxEV8q4
> lots of applications can be installed as a user.

Because most of the non-insignificant ones still CAN'T be, under Windows, to this day. So special people get a completely separate account with pseudo-admin rights. I have to enter those credentials several times a day.

Then I spoke to a help desk guy, who said he had to enter his domain admin account password 40 TIMES a day.

What a waste.
Burning cash to grow worked for Amazon because distribution/logistics is a business that has a fundamental relationship between scale and costs.

Bird, Scoot, Uber, Lyft and everybody else has yet to demonstrate that by scaling dramatically that they lower their costs enough to break even, much less generate SaaS margins.

Until then... They are highly speculative businesses.
Uber says it will start delivering fast food by drone in San Diego this summer
Something like a filter chain for an audio stream is truly the textbook candidate for pipelined concurrency. Conceptually, there are no events or conditional branching. Just a methodical iteration over input samples, in order, producing output samples also in order.

Whatever you can calculate sequentially like:

while True:
buf0 = input.recv()
buf1 = filter1(buf0)
buf2 = filter2(buf1)
buf3 = filter3(buf2)
output.send(buf3)

can instead be written as a set of concurrent worker loops.

Each worker is dedicated to running a specific filter function, so its internal state remains local to that one worker. Only the intermediate sample buffers get relayed between the workers, usually via a low-latency asynchronous queue or similar data structure. If a particular filter function is a little slow, the next stage will simply block on its input receive step until the slow stage can perform the send.

(Edited to try to fix pseudo code block)
Prop 8 passed because more people voted for it than against it.

If conservatives control the government, and they all believe abortion is murder and should be punished as such - then they can pass a law declaring that.

If conservatives control the government, and they still can't get an abortion=murder law passed, and need to form a coalition with other conservatives who simply hate abortion but don't think it is murder, then I think that goes to my point that not all conservatives believe abortion is murder.
DAY!? What magical place do you work at where IT is so specialized that you have to request them to install an application, and it only takes ONE DAY?
I'm mostly vegetarian - rare chicken consumption only. Last week my company cafeteria had beyond meat burgers as the vegetation option. From what I've read on HN they're reasonably close to the taste of meat, and similar in terms of texture.

I don't think I've missed out on anything by restricting myself to a vegetarian diet.
Announcing Ml.net 1.1 and Model Builder Updates
No, it doesn't.

It. Does. Not.

At all
If your family had a personal computer at all you were very well off indeed.
> When you artificially remove bad consequences from some of those choices, it is not surprising that those choices are made more often.

There was a talk by a finance minister from singapore who was asked about his country's social safety net, and he replied to the effect of: we don't have a net, we have a trampoline.
Granted, you're basically right; but still reads as biased to me.

What if they replaced terms like "narcotics traficking" with "drug purchases?"

What if they changed "authorities" to "creeps with badges stalking ordinary people for buying drugs?"

Remember when the Panama Papers were leaked... And nothing happened?

Our taxpayer dollars are diverted to this crusade and so shouldn't we just call it what it is?
I guess I don't really disagree with what you said.

>What does "enforcing norms against anti-social behavior" mean in this context, if not putting people in prison or issuing citations (which eventually lead to prison)?

Not being okay with it, which implies that we'd so something about it. Which does mean things like citations, at a minimum. Right now it's totally normal.

>The frustrating thing is that there is a solution to this, which is called housing first...

Broadly, I agree with this paragraph. I think we should take the billion we spend in this city on homelessness (not sure that stat is actually true since I've never seen the line item in the budget but people say it a lot) and build these places ... and then make them mandatory, or at least semi-mandatory. That might sound extreme, but frankly many of these people clearly don't have agency anymore given their addiction and they've become a danger to themselves and others. So that's my "out there" suggestion. Build the housing, fund the medical and job-training services, and deliberately - not passively - push people into them.

Of course, this presupposes that lack of housing is the first incident problem. Maybe it is, maybe drug use is in some cases. I don't particularly care for drug use, so my personal preference is that we repeal the decriminalization rules and reverse some of the cultural acceptance that's taken hold here of this behavior. We've probably missed the boat on that one, since most here seem to take the libertarian approach that what someone does with their body is "their business", despite the fact that it often becomes someone else's very quickly.

>...backed down when Amazon and other large companies raised hell.

If the city council wanted to just tax Amazon then they could've done that, but instead that cast such a wide net that medium sized low-margin businesses that don't have enormous capital behind them were wrapped up in it too - so I understand why they backed down. There wasn't any real self reflection from them after that happened, so I tend to agree that we're stuck in an infinite loop of "more of this".
> In terms of nutrition rather than ethics it looks like an inferior substitute.

Most of the people eating this are already pretty frail. Sounds like a recipe for disaster IMO.
The big risk I see with drones is that with aggressive jamming and cyber attacks your drone fleet could ostensibly be crippled. But as you said a drone could easily turn harder than any manned aircraft could, loiter/patrol for far longer, and have a much smaller radar cross section since it wouldn't have to accommodate a cockpit. Sooner or later unmanned combat aircraft will dominate.

I also agree that the aircraft carrier will be supplanted at some point because of sophisticated anti ship missiles. But, if carriers can launch drones from much greater distances it will allow carriers to extend their usefulness for quite some time.
TIL that Scythia smelled like Berkeley.
Hmm, this seems similar to what I do with Flickr.

I have my NAS mounted to my MacBook where I process photos and transfer them to my NAS, the Flickr auto uploadr puts them up on Flickr. I wish this would be possible from my NAS which may be something I am missing.

I suppose you lose the ability to go from Phone -> GPhotos -> Gdrive -> NAS. I'll check out the medium post when I'm home though.
Did a little digging and here's what I found out. Apparently Lime scooters and Tile's trackers as well as somebody putting a transmitter in dog collars. So if you become a Helium ISP at least in an urban area there will be a few customers.

But you know what's missing from their website? Where I can buy a transmitter retail to test my hotspot. Maybe you've got to build it yourself and if that's the case technical details like the frequency or a schematic would be helpful.

Lots of times the first people to buy something new when there's no existing base are the hobbyists.
Thing about IPv6 is that it's designers didn't understand the internet. They didn't understand that in a client-server architecture only the servers need full-scale IP addresses because of the 64K ports. They had apparently never heard of the end to end argument. They saw 16-bit computers being wiped out by 32-bit and figured bigger = always better. xerox predicted 2^48 was all that we would ever need and as a Xerox protocol designer myself, I think it's still true. The IPv6 designers thought bigger = better = more router sales ( hey I'm looking at you, Steve Deering! )

I was asked by Qualcomm to determine when IPv6 would completely replace IPv4. This was in 2003 and they expected 2006 or 2007 at the latest! But, Qualcomm never hired internet visionaries ... When I told them "never" I almost got fired !!

When I left Google search 6 months ago, 15 years later, IPv6 was less than 0.1% of the crawled websites.

It's horribly wasteful for sensor networks and IOT.

It's only useful if you have more than 2^24 addresses because IANA hasn't added another class A private network range like 10.x.y.z (hint: there is exactly ONE company that needs a /7 private subnet). 3GPP uses it to give a unique ID to every phone but that's because they think like Qualcomm.

It will never replace IPv4.

IPv4 is like the roman chariot axle width. It was the right answer, and all roads today follow Rome's standard.
Reading the original source with an ad blocker installed may not be providing as much support as you imagine.
See also the disastrous development process of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Fighting_Vehicle#Histo...
Datagrip is a great database IDE.
Chinese hacker used USB sticks to grab hotel guest data sold on freelance sites
My family was pretty poor, but my parents found a way somehow.
You make a good point about extraterritoriality in general, but in the case of the most recent busts the lead org was actually the Germans. Really when you see the domains seized there's always about half a dozen European/anglosphere police logos claiming credit.

The persecution/prosecution of drug users is a multilateral agreement not US big stick diplo.
Very unlikely. Ideally you want your adversaries to be so afraid of how capable your new weapons system is that it acts as a strong deterrent.

Not only that, but a large component of the Joint Strike Fighter program was selling it to allied militaries. It would be silly to trash the aircraft publicly if you want a dozen other nations to buy it.
That’s totally different. Amazon could have been profitable any time they wanted; they chose to reinvest for growth instead. Not all losing money is the same!
No thanks. The older bricks break down and become brittle and discolored if exposed to sunlight enough already.
Does the current state of society not give you pause when you state that our bodies are so resilient to most foods? US obesity rates have nearly tripled in way less than a single generation, there are skyrocketing rates of mental illness, reduced academic achievement, and even evidence of a decline in IQ in developed nations.

I find it challenging to attribute this entirely to lifestyle changes and the internet. In the mean time we have been increasingly introducing manufactured substances and products into our food systems that fit the timeline extremely well. Of course perhaps one problem is that we've introduced so many things that it's become impossible to discern cause from effect. Because while I find it difficult to attribute all change to lifestyle changes, that's undoubtedly played and is playing some role.
There are several Ask HN posts about alternatives for Gmail. Apart from Fastmail, there are more privacy focused services. Some of them: posteo.de, runbox.com, mailbox.org and mailfence.com. These are a lot cheaper than Fastmail too, with full IMAP support. If you want a much cheaper service for many mailboxes, take a look at Migadu. For most people who need multiple mailboxes but don't send a lot of emails (but receive many), I'd find it hard to beat that pricing.
Scoot was primarily renting out full-size street-legal mopeds that you need a driver's license to drive, not the little $200 scooter things that you stand on.