skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
einstein-god relationship has been proven false repeatedly. it has stuck around because people keep mass-forwarding stuff like that..

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly." from http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691023689?ie=UTF8&tag=...

and a letter in which he wrote about his disbelief was auctioned a couple of years back: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscienc...

i said "_could_ result in confirmation bias". that is, make confirmation bias more probable, not absolute..

""Why was the universe created?"
Do you think science will ever answer this question?"

hopefully, some day, if we work towards it..

should we instead give up and resign ourselves to the fact that a wizard did it?
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creation-myths, souls etc.
I think it's clear why the OP comes off as sounding condescending. Just as I think it's clear why I come off as condescending in that post.

I also think the implied definition of what is religious and spiritual is pretty narrow, and seems to lend itself to monotheistic and/or abrahamic traditions. A lot of what people might say is 'spiritual' can end up being a lot more philosophical than mystical. The terms always end up being muddy, so I'm not saying that as a personal dig.

I would say that being human results in the confirmation bias. A marked understanding of it's psychological mechanism can perhaps reduce your susceptibility, but I'd need to see good research on the topic ;). It's a pretty fundamental heuristic.

I don't think the ideas of coding and Religion are by necessity parallel and intertwined. Perhaps one can draw a more distinct parallel between hard-line, rigorous Computer Science (Capital CS), and a complete inability to be 'spiritual' but I've been mostly referencing folks who show creativity in more peripheral areas, or at least in areas not directly related to Formal Research. I also think that people who are heavily involved in sciences, and still subscribe to Christianity, tend to deemphasize the parts of the bible that seem like fairy-tales, being much more liberal in cutting them out (see the bible Jefferson edited) while focusing on the interesting philosophical and ethical implications of the portions they deem more legitimate. I'm not 100% familiar with Larry Walls interpretation, but it seems pretty darn flexible.

I also don't know that a religious confirmation bias is going to translate into his coding ("My algorithm is fast. God must have made it that way"? ;)

I don't mind people disagreeing with theism, or talking about it. What I don't like is the implicit attitude, which can often be, "you believe in something other than pure hard science, and I don't, so I'm smarter."

I'm not saying that's the only version of the general sentiment, just that it's frequent enough.

But you're probably just too self-righteous to even read this inspiring post
That's also what I do with the podcasts I listen to. 1.35x is my default though ;-)

The files go from my podcatcher directly into sox for conversion. Sounds a lot nicer than the speedup mechanism provided by my mobile media player.

time sox --single-threaded -S "${FILE}" -t wav - tempo ${TEMPO} | lame -h -V 4 - ${NEWFILE} || exit 1

id3cp --v1tag "${FILE}" "${NEWFILE}"

Does anyone know of a way that doesn't need a conversion to WAV first?
And that's about 10x less than what they bought TweetDeck for. They probably raised a nice undisclosed round when they rebranded into UberMedia.
heh.. or recruiting people to jump into the lion's den at the zoo to give it a hug?

edited my parent comment to make it clearer
How are you supposed to launch a startup when you're in a bus? I'd consider a major step of launching a startup to be verifying the problem you're solving actually exists and people will pay for your solution.

Without that step, isn't it a mobile hackathon?
I didn't say he believed in a personal god. He believed in a more abstract sort of god, one that reflected the mysteries that humans will never penetrate; he also said this concept defined his sense of being religious.

"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."
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I guess I don't see it. Here are my rough thoughts.

1. Nokia was on the verge of non-existence. Honestly, Meego and Symbian were not going to cut it. Nokia just didn't have the chops to do it and that was obvious.

2. MSFT was aching to get in the game w/ something/someone other than HTC and this was a real opportunity.

3. Nokia hand Android available to it or this partnership w/ MSFT. By choosing MSFT they got cash infusion and also got to outsource dev to MSFT (which I'm assuming from what I read is the arrangement).

So far, so good. Given those parameters it actually seems to make strategic sense for Nokia to choose MSFT and this route. But wait..that isn't all.

5. Who is going to write the apps for this? Had Nokia chosen Android, they would have literally gained hundreds of thousands of apps instantaneously. Does anyone know the number of people writing WP7 apps? It is not a huge number and most of the apps are not good. Sure, it is early and this announcement will likely boost the numbers but still...it isn't android numbers and it certainly isn't iOS numbers.

Given #5 all of the sudden the decision looks quite questionable.

I guess, what I don't see, is who is Nokia really going to call a customer? If Nokia wants to capture the smartphone market, this is just plain dumb. If nokia wants corporate phones, it might be quite smart..being able to replace RIM/Blackberry just about a launch (really, it would be that easy if they focused). If they want to capture Corporate market AND capture ultra cheap entry cell phones....now it sorta makes sense.

Ok...so what am I missing? Anyone know their real strategy?
>Nokia would be just another Android device maker competing with dozens of companies offering basically the same exact product except it would have a Nokia logo and some Nokia skin installed

Excuse me for asking, but how is this different to being just another WP7 device maker?
I don't think there is anything outside physical reality. Or, if there were, then by definition its presence would be irrelevant to anything we can practically do about it.

But I think Larry is not talking about this sort of metaphysical question. He believes, for example, that Jesus lived on earth and is the son of God. And notice how he tortures himself to simultaneously hold both a belief in evolution, and devine omnipotence. Its rather interesting to see.
Arty: the technicolor phones on show are conceptual devices produced by the two companies - sounds like a case and some graphic design.
> The asymptotic optimality of samplesort is in the sense that it takes (1 + o(1)) N log N / log 2 comparisons, i.e., you can't beat it by any constant factor.

Why isn't it used everywhere that people currently use Quicksort? I've never actually heard of anyone using Samplesort except in a parallel context.
vacuum can have temperature? am i reading it wrong or....?
Why not just discard the single belief (held only on faith), and get rid of the contradictions in one fell swoop?

For one thing, even the best philosophers and epistemologists have been unable to do so for millennia, all swell foops aside.
it's harder to build a profitable company when you're rich. instead of solving problems you'll be tempted to throw money at them.
It's not just a metaphor. Christians self-report believing much more specific things about God's opinions and demands.

As for me, I don't "want to believe" things. What I want is for the model in my head to match reality. To have reasons other than apparent truth for believing anything is to invite self-deception. It's hard enough to winnow out the nonsense our culture has saddled us with, without actually rooting for some of it.
Second sentence is unrelated to the first one; I was in a hurry.

My wife has an LG Optimus One (e.g. cheap Android).
It's really nice for the price paid, but she has had problems with it.

I tried to say that the iPhone provides the best experience (out of the box at least), and if you want an Android, you should check out the ratings on that product because quality varies.
Great point Ted! I totally missed that.
"You are fixated on everything being about truth and facts and who's right"

would you rather i countered an argument with untruths and lies?

what i'm trying to say is, if you are willing to give credibility to any assertion which is without proof, then you have to give an equal amount to credibility to _all_ assertions without proof

i.e, all religions equally, fairies, leprechauns, elfs, russel's teapot, a furry-god, Elvis still alive, alien-invasions and abductions, etc..

and problems arise then, if you give credibility to _all_ religions, there will be contradictions

- they have different creation stories and timelines

- multiple 'unique' prophets

- multiple 'chosen' tribe/people

etc..
I am puzzled to see people straddling high logical faculties, while choosing to disregard those abilities when it comes to some of their beliefs.

Isn't that an a priori assumption that Larry's completely disregards his logical facilities in certain areas of his beliefs? Have you ever talked to him about what he believes and why? He might surprise you.
it still baffles me why that nav-bar isn't, why it doesn't populate with the services you use most often you.
Two reasons: 1. It's a PITA to implement; 2. You need a large N to overcome the o(1), and at that point you're usually dominated by the performance of your memory hierarchy rather than by the cost of doing compares.

Last I heard, python's built-in sort was a type of samplesort, though, so it isn't completely unused.
I believe the temperature reference is in regards to the object's temperature.
Honestly? Christian beliefs do give me pause. I grew up in that, and I grew up in a subset that can be particularly ridiculous. My D&D games were less fantastic than my sundays at church. When it comes to popular Christianity and it's general adherents, we would probably agree on a lot of things. I was skeptical reading through the article, but by the end I was inspired by how Larry had synthesized his belief system and coding philosophy into a seemingly cohesive and fascinating whole. My guess is it's probably an edge case. My response to your post was strictly translating it as a response to Wall.

That said, the varieties of christianity and their resemblance to 5" fairies is widely disparate. (I know I mentioned Deists as one possibly more rational variation). I don't want to fall into the trap of overgeneralizing about anything.

My points here are really pretty specifically related to people who clearly display extra-ordinary ability in one area, and are defamed because they hold interest or beliefs in another area that's only vaguely related.

If you were being more general, then I apologize for my snarky posts. Of course the irony has already been pointed out, seeing as I condescended on your perceived condescension. Humility has never been my strong suit ;) Something about the programmers virtues.. now wait.. who talked about those
People generally agree that there was not a malfunction in the electronics.

But whatever happened with Woz's car? He claimed he could reproduce an uncontrolled acceleration bug in the electronics. (However, this is unrelated to the alleged malfunction affecting other people.) Last I heard, he turned over his car to Toyota, and that's it.

Anyone know more details?
This, then cell phone 10 minutes later. Easy enough, and I might give it a shot.
I'm just glad we can all have a decent holy war over something other than text editors.
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I fail to see how the article, and particularly that quote in any way peg Wall as a Deist. Or were you rather arguing that he is a theist (not a Deist)? Deism and Evangelical Christianity aren't even close to the same thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

[edited to put in a needed question mark]
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source please?
that was in response to a rabbi.. was he trying to be diplomatic?

so he was.. agnostic?

"My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment." from: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7921.html

are agnostics believers?
you are still assuming einstein is infallible.
einstein believing in god would not really prove the existence of god

he also did not believe in black-holes etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein#Einstein.27s_controver...
Maybe. Maybe not. But I certainly think we've advanced well beyond the 6 day creation myth of the bible.

Can you still call yourself a Christian if you selectively edit the parts of the Christian faith you chose to hold? If so, how much?

Most people don't actually hold their beliefs up to scrutiny. And none of us can claim to be totally consistent. My impression is that most Christian "scientists" (not Christian Scientists, TM), are really Judeo-Christian ethicists, and culturally connected to a Christian community. But they have left a literal belief in the Christian canon far behind.
I'm really only vaguely familiar with Deism. I encounter most of this sort of thing second-hand from a friend of mine who is fascinated with all manner of religions. We both grew up in the same church, so we talk sometimes.

I just didn't want to slap that label on him without knowing. Seems like you're ahead of me on that curve, heh
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Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

I can't think of a single high profile company that has done well out of a deal with Microsoft. However the the road through computing history is littered with the burnt out wrecks of companies that did do deals with Microsoft.
Personally, it never fails to amaze me how otherwise very intelligent and thoughtful people remain stuck believing in an all knowing, all powerful, and apparently all loving sentient being who lives 'inside all of us', has a host of angels, who judges you when you die and depending on who you hear it from was revealed to us in a hate-filled book through a man who found an angel in a cave and used this power to carve an empire out of the arab world or instead revealed to us as the father of an admittedly decent dude, the story of which also happened to be documented in another suitably hate-filled book.

Can you learn from their teachings? Yes. The same way you can learn from any other self-help book. The danger of religion is that it often comes loaded with a message that has been refined, over centuries, to become the perfect weapon of control over you.

For this reason, I have to agree with the original poster. Theists who buy into the above stories and others like them, do not impress me.

NB: This is of course referring to the Judeo-Christian God with a capital G, not the Deist "Supreme Architect" (which to me feels like a stepping stone for theists who feel kinda atheist but aren't ready to take the plunge yet) or the 'universe' that you feel a part of when you lose your sense of identity through drugs or meditation.

Also, spirituality and prayer aren't necessarily bad things. In Japan I bought what's essentially a talisman of the god of good entrepreneurial fortune and took it with me to job interviews. I didn't believe that it would actually increase my chances of getting a job, but it became part of my pre-interview ritual and it was somehow 'nice' to know that I'd taken it to all my interviews.
Yeah, but Microsoft?

If this partnership succeeds it would be the exception.
Radio stations pay annual fees for the license of broadcasting music, which is why stations have to report every song they play (this data is sampled to divvy up royalty payments to labels and artists.)
It's funny, though.
I think 2 of these myths are applicable to any experience programmer, and 3 of them are about the trade-off between using existing knowledge and learning new things.

Myths 1 (old guys are expensive) and 2 (old guys don't work 80 hours) are the same for any "senior" (read 5 years + experience) programmer. Young programmers will work 80 hour weeks while they build experience and find a better job, but once they become valuable workers (and figure out how to get paid for this value) then they get better jobs. The problem with hiring easily exploitable workers is that they jump ship the minute they figure out that they are being exploited, and replacing them is really expensive (both in fees, and getting the new guy up to speed).

Points 2, 4, and 5 all relate to older minds using existing solutions, rather than figuring out new solutions. This has strengths and weaknesses, but it's generally a strength. The reason older minds use existing solutions is that it's generally cheaper. A friend of mine studied that, and found that when older people are learning a completely new technology, there is a period in which they are not productive (while their brain refuses to switch into learning mode, and tries to find an old model that works OK), then they start ramping up just as good as young people (minus the delay).

The reality is though, there aren't that many completely new technologies. Older people are faster at learning new technologies if they use the same model as an old technology that the young people hadn't learned before.
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The Nokia n900 (Maemo) albeit with some flaws, is the greatest phone I will ever own. Allow me to explain.

I live in Canada. We get a lot of snow over here. Last winter, I lost my Nokia phone. I remember it was a night we had a huge snowstorm, and I stayed in drinking hot chocolate by the fireplace only to wake up the next day stressing out because I couldn't find my phone. After an hour of searching, I came to terms that I must have lost it in the mall the day before.

I end up leaving later that day, and find it on my driveway buried in snow. Snow plows came twice and cleaned my driveway and they must have driven over it with the plow part of the truck. Not only that, it was completely submerged in snow for over 12 hours. I picked it up, brushed off as much snow as I could, and tried using it.

It still worked. It didn't even have any scratches (1 minor one). I've owned many phones in my life, and most of them break in the stupidest ways. Nokia is the rambo of phones.
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patio11's answer is what I was looking for. not the data structure. so most sites all web apps can be broken down into a 'stack'?
My bad. You were right about my mistake. Thanks for the link ... I have idea if Wall falls into this category - seems unlikely.
52 comments. tptacek has made 48 of them.
Why delete your account? Why not just stop using it? I don't understand this.
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This. My little sister is working at The Economist and will go to Princeton next year to study Developmental Economics. She could work magic with the data she can get from the kiva API or the UK government data website, but she has no easy way to parse it other than nag me (who got a 3rd in CS from UCL) to write a little script in ruby that does it for her.
> I'm not sure anyone is arguing against the latter part of your statement but you as you contradict yourself by arguing that it's a software problem first. AI is a biological, psychological, cog sci, EE/hardware, et al problem because, as you state, understanding how general intelligence works is important--as it is important to know how to build the technology that will run it (ie, possibly the memristor + something else, of course).

AI is a software (or other implementation of a specific algorithm) problem first, because general intelligence boils down to having an algorithm along with the right sort of inductive bias, and then running that in a world where it has input and its outputs matter.

While the other fields you mention may have something useful to say about what that inductive bias is, that doesn't mean that the core problem isn't one of software. The parent's point, as I read it, is that the specific type of general purpose hardware you run it on is irrelevant to solving that problem, and thus that this article is really rather sensational.

Apart from that, since we don't know what algorithms we need to solve that problem, it seems like premature optimization to start coming up with new hardware configurations for it. Although I do agree that parallelism seems to be important (e.g. for evolutionary methods) there's no reason that something standard like a GPU can't do the trick as well as it does for other types of computations that need parallelism, or at least prove the concept.

I imagine the DARPA grant is for something more sensible though, like for being able to run known algorithms (or adaptations thereof) which already have known uses, much, much more quickly; or at greater scale.
I would love to meet him someday. Larry is obviously very thoughtful about many things. I guess it would have been more accurate to state that he uses his logical facilities to shoehorn what to me seem like obvious contradictions, into an integrated mindset, even though some of his axioms derive purely from his faith in tenants with no evidence.
Your #2 suggests that it would be slower than ordinary Quicksort on normal-sized datasets. But dual-pivot quicksort is faster than ordinary Quicksort on normal-sized datasets. So in at least one sense, dual-pivot is not a step in the direction of samplesort.

Python's built-in sort is timsort, last I heard, which is a variant of mergesort that looks for existing sorted or backwards runs in order to run faster in the common cases of mostly-sorted or mostly-backwards data. It's true that Python's built-in sort was a samplesort variant until 2002, though, which I didn't know.

(It does seem like Samplesort's virtue of minimizing comparisons would be particularly desirable in an environment like Python, where every comparison potentially involves a call into slow interpreted code.)