skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You make a large mistake here. I feel that the only way your argument holds is by assuming its conclusion. Which would be: what is going on in [some/most] of our brain is something more than or very different from 'just' statistical inference and optimization. Right now, we don't know whether this is true or not but more people are beginning to think not.

For example let us consider that based on time of day and knock you can guess who is most likely at your door. How why, can you know this? Have you learned or figured out anything there?

Or say, I tell you that a person is of gender X, race Y and lives in city Z. You will automatically generate an idea of what this person is like. And it will be different from what I would generate and these data points would likely mean nothing of significance to a 3 year old. Why? Because we have learned a model from our past experience/data. Machine Learning also uses generative models to infer situations. And in fact, we humans perform a very weak form of machine learning. It goes by the name of stereotyping or profiling.

When you are trying to figure out something. The process is not some clean logical step by step deduction. It is more like a search with dead ends (local optimums), back tracking and restarts. Trying and throwing away different ideas. Or when trying to learn a new sport, dance or flip. You do not consider the physics of the situations to try and figure amount the correct amount of impulses to apply. You try again and again to learn or statistically generate a satisfactory approximate local optimum of the correct physics model for the situation at hand.

As for systems which generate code. We can look at it most literally in terms of those which evolve rules in some way or loosely by considering that all machine learning does is use lots of data to prevent the programmer from hand coding a giant restricted system. Regardless of your stance, these systems differ from mere rewriting in that they are not deterministic. They interact and respond to different situations in varying ways. The more sophisticated methods can develop new algorithms - a set of rules - that were not programmed and make no sense to the developer to develop behaviours to cope with their situations. It is true that we provide a base, but that does not mean some limited form of learning is not occurring. What Machine learning cannot do that we can is introspect, abstract and generalize across domains.

I am the reverse of you. Before I picked up machine learning I thought the brain was something special. But now I cant help but feel that we are just clever marionettes and that whats going on is simply mundane mathematics by clever co-opting of physics by nature. I find this fact to be amazingly beautiful.
"If you want people to stay at home and do nothing, you should turn the internet back on." --- Conan O’Brian’s advice to Egypt

Regardless, the turnout and determination of the Egyptian people is an inspiration. Great to see the beginnings of a positive outcome.
Inspiration has an Expiration Date
Watching Al Jazeera's live stream and they had one of their journalists on the phone from the square. She expressed excitement and delight that Mubarak was gone. The host guy back in the studio pointed out the journalist on the phone had been impartial up until now, and basically apologised for her expressing her opinion.

I thought that was pretty classy.
The stock market isn't predicting anything. It just believes given the current information and Nokia's decision, $NOK's value deserves to be lower now than what it was prior. It's just a current snapshot - no indication of the company's future whatsoever.
Mubarak handing power to the army probably means that the regime lives on, Mubarak's just not in charge of it anymore. Egypt's issues aren't settled now, this is only a step and it remains to be seen if real, true, democratic change is going to happen.
I wonder if it would be possible to create a Think Tank that actually produces ideas, instead of laundering wishful thinking? This could be constructed as a consortium into which companies pay money. The output would be in the form of reports. The idea is to give the money going in a bit of "Platonic Amnesia."

This is a function that Universities used to perform.
I understand the basics of marketing, but asking a customer for their zip code isn't going to tell you much about them personally. It's the reverse engineering that is the real key and problem with this strategy. I'm pretty sure that when any internet user with half a brain goes to a website they know they're giving up info of some sort, what page they came from, IP addy, etc. My only point is that you don't expect that same level of privacy invasion (if you will) when you go buy some headphones from Best Buy.
Wow, this is the fastest reversal I've seen. Yesterday he refuses to go, the army says they support him until September and all of a sudden everything changes. This is an incredible change.

Now comes the critical moment in Egyptian history. They have no government now, constitution is practically void.

I'd do a grep and replace on the US constitution and replace US centric stuff with Egyptian stuff if it was me ;p
Why would Qt die once Nokia looses interest in it? I am sure Qt can survive on its own.
From what I have read (but I do not have personal experience here yet), if you do decide to raise prices, be sure to grandfather your existing paying customers at their current price. People become furious over raising prices of a subscription, even if it is a tiny amount.

To decide if you should think about raising them, I think it would be nice to know what your current profit margin is per paying customer.
Where does one hire people like that?
True, but most people won't think twice and will just give it to them.
I've seen zero effort from the anti-IP movement to go after politicians or even try to reach them, and I have seen a lot of FUD and propaganda against selected companies that are determined to somehow be "evil" while other, favored companies get a pass.

I don't understand their motivations, but I'm not convinced that actual change is one of them.

Further, I am not a fan of the current system, but I have yet to see a proposal for an alternative.

Finally, isn't it hypocritical to attack people for operating under the system as it is, when the people doing the attacking are not trying to change the system at all?

Do you see google giving up its patents in any area where it has a competitive advantage?

Of course not.
The carnival has actually been there for days now...
The nice thing is that QT is now fully OSS- LGPL and GPL versions. This means that development can go on outside of QT/Nokia.

The difficult part is that there is no current team to do so, but some of the current devs may be willing to continue work in a leadership position of the OSS effort after the next rounds of layoffs.

Alternatively, a company could be formed (YC12?) to continue coding QT, and offer support + training. Hell, I'm tempted ;)
GroupOn, LivingSocial engaging in questionable practices
Near the end of the post, they responded to this:

> Well, first off, it's supposed to be fun. If you don't see the joy in either of these puzzles, please don't apply.

If you don't consider implementing something like tgrep fun, you're in the wrong line of work. I've actually thought of something like that before, for my own logs, but never gotten around to trying it out. They want people who consider what we do fun -- if you don't, they don't want you.
He's making a point about the buzzwords, not the actual processes.
To paraphrase Churchill, Nokia’s deal with Microsoft was the worst strategy they could have come up with, except for all the available alternatives. It’s a partnership born out of mutual desperation. Nokia needs an OS that doesn’t suck to develop on (unlike Symbian) and that they can actually ship (unlike Meego). Microsoft needs a revenue stream other than their Windows/Office duopoly. Thus, they need each other.

Why isn’t Nokia going with Android? Because Google doesn’t need anything that Nokia can offer; Google will be happy to count their ad-clicks while Samsung, Motorola, HTC, et al. drive down one another’s profit margins.

(Disclaimer: I work for Nokia and despise Microsoft as much as any self-respecting Linux geek, so I think my biases cancel one another out.)
Perhaps, but those employees work for a company that was out of touch with the market. Something has/had to give.

I think the move to WP7 may well be a savvy one (though I too would like to have seen a demo of it running), but can completely understand the employees concern.

Perhaps it would have made more sense to be more specific about what is going to happen with their employees, and done it internally - before rushing to tell the world about their new partnership. The resultant leaks wouldn't have been much bigger than what we already had this week.
Yes, try to kiss the TV or the monitor :))
I'm trading money at my 30s with love in my 20s. So I don't think I'll miss much. I'm afraid I'll be obliged to take a job in my 30s since odds are I don't have many options to start a startup. However, now, I can take more risks for that, since I don't have any obligations.
Lessons from our First Ten Hires
It's much more fun to put a bit of research in, and find out the store's phone number before buying batteries. When they ask for your number, give them theirs. They'll start typing it in, then pause in confusion, which you are then free to enjoy!
The incorrectness of your statement is explained in every definition of patent requirements. For example, it's in the 2nd paragraph of Wikipedia article called "Patent". I'll even give you a direct link to this requirement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_(patent)
The germ of this deal probably dates to the early days of WP7 development - seriously, Microsoft would have been negligent if they were not shopping for partners early on. For those deep inside the phone business, it probably has been a well known rumor for some time, which would explain the course taken by Motorola and HTC more plausibly than the corporate spite the article assumes.
Ask HN: Review my service (Monitor For Me)
I apologize if this is outside the scope of acceptable behavior for HN... I posted a Show HN yesterday and didn't get much of any traction, so I figured an "Ask" for a review would be a bit more appropriate.

Monitor For Me (http://monitorfor.me, clickable in comments) is a service I built from my own need for it -- a simple, affordable app that will listen for my smoke detector to go off and send me an SMS message (or email) to let me know.

It also uploads a 5 second audio sample so I can listen to what triggered the alert, and I can request more samples at will to "check in."

brudgers mentioned that receiving a text message (as opposed to a phone call going out to police and/or fire) is not necessarily the first thing he'd want to see happen. I can certainly appreciate the sentiment -- you want instant response in a situation like this. My personal preference, though, is to make the judgement call myself (and avoid costly false alarms). If everyone else disagrees with me, well, I suppose I'll need to retool the idea, but that's what I want to figure out.

Also: I'm no designer. I tried to keep a simple, clean aesthetic, but if it's just plain unusable, please let me know.

I look forward to your feedback on any part of this: design, idea in general, usability, etc.

Thanks,
John

Site: http://monitorfor.me

Invite Code: HNFTW (free 7 day subscription)
If they don't get hired at Reddit, it could be a good portfolio piece to show another employer. It's just a good reason to make something.
Is Symbian really that bad or is it a case of not cool/new?
Clickable: http://monitorfor.me

Don't forget the invite code: HNFTW
The difficult part is always what comes after a revolution. Having the military in charge isn't necessarily a good thing, and whether Egypt does get a democratic government will now depend upon how the military behaves.
Hey look, they just blanket send out notices without actually looking into what they are doing. Not saying we didn't know that before, but it's a novel way of pointing out how stupid it is.
I can't say I have more than a subjective view, but people such as you describe, from my father's generation (him included, and coloring my impression), are/were often "wicked" smart and also curious.

I'm reminded of stories about how many were recruited from linguistics programs and other areas. These are often people with a diversity of interests. And yet, they tend to excel in all or most of those interests. (Linguistics, physical sciences, mathematics, music, photography, social sciences, etc., etc.)

My impression is that it was more difficult, and challenging, and that the people you found there had self selected down to a very, very capable -- and often interesting -- subset.

I guess you also had the more "corporate" roles. But even many of those had to "get their hands dirty" when it came to picking the proverbial or literal moth out of the innards so that e.g. payroll wouldn't be delayed. (There was no "plug and play".)
Interview with man accused of "practicing engineering without a license"
Opinion from Robert Scoble:

http://scobleizer.com/2011/02/11/dear-nokia-fans-youre-nuts/
Hearing about love stories and technology, a powerful combination for the hair-shop (Hello).
But if the board wanted to consider switching to "someone else's platform", why would they hire someone from Microsoft?

Does this suggest that the board wanted to do a deal with Microsoft all along? If so, why would they need to hire him to do it?

Or that they didn't know what they wanted and this guy seized the initiative?

Edit: answering my own question. I think the board probably brought this guy in to take the heat in case this deal goes really bad from a PR and legal perspective.
Learning Java is easy - porting 20years of libraries from C/C++ to Java is trickier.

We only just got done porting them all from Fortran!
They could give you money, or they could give that other think tank money that produces reports in their favor...
Agreed. Tgrep is a nice take home challenge, but a client-side Reddit clone is far too much to ask for. The only applicants they're going to get for the front-end position are Reddit mega-fans with too much spare time - though I suppose that may be what they're looking for.

Regardless, most real "rock star programmers" (as much as I hate the term) aren't going to be blowing a day or two on spec work.
It doesn't matter if the employees leave for startups or other companies, or if they just don't cooperate wholeheartedly. In either case, resources they used to have access to are lost. Management needs to do something, or they'll bleed intellectual captial.

If a company of that size were to lay off 100's of technical people here in the Netherlands, that'd be a large supply to absorb for the industry, and especially those with 10-15 years of highly specialized skills (antenna design, phone chipset design etc).

If their jobs were based in something technical and had significant value, they'll be able to find employment elsewhere. This was also true of former employees of the Smalltalk vendor.

The thing to remember here, is that your most valuable employees are also the ones that can find new jobs fastest.
Thanks for the kind words and actually taking the time to try it out! :)

How much have you talked to users in this time? Have you had any bands use some of the functionality while you were working on it to get an idea of what they really wanted?

My old band used the original version of this app (it was overall much more basic than this but with all of the same functionality - if that makes any sense)... not to mention I know bands and exactly how the majority of them think when it comes to this boring stuff - I've been planning on adding a more guided approach. I also know exactly what tour managers have to do... and the app takes care of 99% of it - which is actually mainly who this is for. You'll just have to take my word for it... this app is exactly what tour managers need. They do everything on paper first and transfer it to excel later.

I really like the idea of reducing the feature set,,, but at the same time I feel like the culmination of all of the features is really what's going to reel in the management, booking agencies, and record labels - which is who I'm really after (more money there!)... individual bands are a plus.
Initializr – Start an HTML5 Project in 15 seconds
Satarii: The mouse for your video
I forgot - is this the year of the Linux desktop?
It's pronounced 'think tank.'
- Site is simple and clear. I like.

- I'd get rid of the Magic, eh? link. Doesn't really relate to the rest of the product and some people probably won't "get it".

- As for promoting the most obvious thing would be to email a bunch of high profile blogs (that would have use for this) and give it to them. If they use it others will notice. Maybe add a little "powered by loudly" link over the pic.

- Why the subdomain if the main domain just redirects?
I don’t understand the 9-to-5
Just because you want WebM to not infringe and to succeed, that doesn't make any possible facts or remarks that potentially conflict with that wish FUD.
If you can, I urge you to get a look of the live stream at aljazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/ The Tahir square is absolutely euphoric.
I think it's fine to ask someone to code something as a pre-interview so long as it's short (can be done in 48 hours by just about anyone) and it's something you're actually going to use on your system.

I was recently asked to write a simple CRUD page for contacts (name, address, etc) as a pre-interview test and that's well within the above.

You have to keep in mind that people can't apply for many jobs if they are all doing that, though. You're going to severely limit the number of applicants you get. It'll limit it to only people who really want to work there, but also to people who have enough free time to throw away to do the interview.
Like I said, if you're going to make such an assertion, please provide an explanation how it is incorrect. Linking to wikipedia as you did is fallacious for more than one reason, including argument from authority, argument from false authority, and on the basic fact that you did not actually make a claim, you just implied someone else made a claim, and left it to me to guess where that claim was made and what part of the second paragraph showed an error in my claim.

The article you linked to actually confirms my assertion by going over the situations where one inventor will get a patent on something another inventor also created. Therefore, one is incentivized to patent something to obtain protection, which is the claim I was making in the first place.

So, not only are you flat out wrong, you have twice been given the opportunity to provide an explanation for your assertion and twice failed to do so. Meaning you are not worth taking seriously because you are apparently more interested in saying I'm wrong than making an argument, which means I think you're trying to argue to the person rather than the point. Downvoting only convinces me of this.

"The incorrectness of your statement is explained in every definition of patent requirements. For example, it's in the 2nd paragraph of Wikipedia article called "Patent". I'll even give you a direct link to this requirement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_(patent)
Not like this, there's a reporter from the BBC tweeting how the streets going to the square are all packed, and palpable joy is everywhere.

Watch the video stream if you can, it's uplifting to see. It's more than just the anticipation of celebration, it's the pure and unadulterated celebration and the carnival atmosphere associated with that.

Just put it into perspective, a dictator that most have lived under all their lives, the fear that goes with it... it's all being released in one go.

It's really hard to watch these pictures and not feel that rub off, but down on the ground this is probably the highest concentration of pure happiness and elation on this planet.

Look, awesome is an over-used word and we're an extremely cynical bunch... but this really is awesome.
Doesn't that pretty well describe the reasonably successful approach Apple used in moving to Mac OS X? Sure there are differences: Jobs was at Apple before; Apple bought Next; .... There are also similarities in that the MS/Nokia partnership represents a pivot from the current course that has no migration path other than total change.
Intel: “We’re Not Blinking on MeeGo”
I agree. Consciousness is not required for intelligence. Before I read your post, I was going to write to mention as well that people's definition is not only extremely wide ranging - running the gamut from memorizing digits of pi or spitting out trivia to self awareness and introspection - but it is also inconsistent. Changing scope and form based on whether the entity in question is autistic or a machine.

I muse that there is a race of AI type intelligences where genius is measure only in their ability to create moving works of arts and any fool can perform advanced mathematics and exceedingly complex computations involving a vast amount of variables.
Old Funny Photography
Old Funny Photography
I think the move to WP7 may well be a savvy one

So was ObjectShare's move to Java. That's not the issue. The issue is management being so out of touch with the employees. It's like a car with a loose steering linkage. Lots of things can go wrong, but a mechanism by which you'd even feel those things is also compromised.
>1. Hire someone from Microsoft to run the company

Except, he was only at Microsoft a year and a half and before that he was with Juniper Networks and before that with Adobe Systems.

What I mean is, he knows more about Microsoft and how their offerings might fit in at Nokia (than say an OS by a company he's not familiar with), but it's a stretch to couch it as if he was an old time Microsoft employee who is going to force Microsoft on Nokia.
During beta, the payout is between 5 - 10 cents per view. We are, however, working on bringing it up to a dollar by giving users an option to rate videos, provide feedback to advertisers, sharing the videos on the network and taking other actions which are all payable by sponsors.
I love this site: http://www.sorting-algorithms.com/

As far as practice problems, sorry, don't have anything to help out there.
Suppose for a moment that you invent something, but don't tell anyone. Then someone else can obviously patent it.

Suppose you publish something on your blog. The patent examiner doesn't read blogs, so someone else can obviously patent it.

Suppose you publish it in a well-respected journal of computer science. The patent examiner doesn't read journals either, so someone can obviously patent it.

Now obviously, none of these patents are valid, but that is not how the patent system works.
True. But there is an election coming up next. Now they have just began, Tunisia has just began too. There is an opportunity here since media will be opened (it already opened in Tunisia) and also the doors for true opponents. It's time to guard the election and ensure that the right one is elected.

We have just began, and I hope everything will be fine.
You could always use some sort of FFI. I don't think it's that big a deal, since you can still use C and C++ libraries on any desktop platforms + on Android.
If I spend the time to write a reddit clone, I'm going to launch it as a competitor, not submit it as a resume.
<3 mailinator
He actually said something along the lines of "...do forgive her for her reaction. She was 1 week old when Mubarak came into office."

Very cool.
Icecreen - Follow your favorite tv shows
Thank you! We are making a video about How It Works, should make it easier to understand the concept.