skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Anyone else here incredibly disappointed in the discourse around the lab-leak hypothesis?

I'm not even talking about the truth of it. Instead the way the discussion has occurred and changed over time. In the earliest days it seemed implausible but possible, to suddenly fringe and impossible, then recently to something that _could_ occur.

At some point there was this weird, almost intentional, conflation of the idea the virus could have escaped in some way related to the labs in Wuhan with some sort of nationalist, uneducated caricature blaming the Chinese.

Worse still is the weird apologia, or cope, around the topic in these threads. People recognize the political reality, and it's easy to get distracted in threads tossing links around. But we still see weird arguments like:

- Oh there _was_ nothing wrong with it, but /most/ people were using it to be xenophobic or racist (QED).

- There was never anything really against the idea, but instead new evidence came out!

- Some flunky 'Bayesian' argument clearly proving one way or the other.

There's probably merit to each point above, but is that really satisfactory in light of how discourse was shaped? It actually feel likes gas-lighting. I don't track every comment, every article, and every casual conversation I have. But it has changed, the media has softened, the hostile atmosphere of the last four years is dissipating.

Before anyone starts screaming for sources - this is just some free-form thoughts on the subject. I'm a regular Joe. My contribution to this topic is hoping someone more qualified is able to look deeply enough into it. I'm also terminally online, and have read several hundred comments every day over this pandemic, and observed general trends.
Without having done any research, it certainly feels more plausible that experimenting on a small scale should satisfy curiosity more than it would engender (heh) some burning desire to take things further just for the sake of it.

And tendentious language, such as calling simple things like not giving detentions for a boy arriving to school in a skirt or a girl declaring she wants to be known as Pete "bending over backwards", really only weakens your argument.
Recently started using RoboKiller and it's reduced these to a near zero level.
There was Lego creator, though building part was 3rd person so probably closer to KidCAD than Minecraft.

I actually really wanted to like that game as a kid, but either my computer wasn't beefy enough to run it, or it was a buggy crashy mess (not totally sure which).
This isn't a mono repo, it's a set of associated code. If you have a front end and backend that are tightly coupled they should be in the same repository.
It's not a file format problem, it's a user experience problem. I can't save a Twitter "GIF" and share it without resorting to external tools like youtube-dl.
> Europe was a significant player in the early PC revolution and other technologies ubiquitous today; consider, for example, that the ARM processor was developed in the UK.

And Minitel.

While laughed at today, it was a demonstration that people were willing to spend money online (and a working payment system).
Product team shouldn’t understand the product sounds like a recipe for failure to me. The product team actually should have a good idea of which component does what and be able to identify where the defects and opportunities lie. If they don’t then that’s a communications failure.
I'm curious to hear to objection(s) to working in "pharma" if you have the time.
The way to do it is to give a very generous salary and to simultaneously crack down hard on even the appearance of impropriety. Neither is being done right now, and part of the reason is that you can't really do one without the other[1], so you're stuck in a bit of a catch-22.

[1] You can't crack down on on public servants questionably but not clearly criminally making money on the side if everyone that's supposed to be doing the cracking down are also public servants who sympathize (more cynically, are in on the same gig) because they're also making a fraction of what their peers are making. And you can't pay your public servants more when the people are fuming at the individually arguable but clear-in-aggregate corruption that is rampant.
Quite extensive research actually. The overwhelming medical consensus is that puberty blockers are safe, and this is backed up by over three decades of their use in treating trans youth and even longer in treating precocious puberty.

I leave it to the reader to determine whether they think having to take vitamin supplement counts as a significant side-effects.
I would note, however, that it is also important to put these side effects in context. The contraceptive pill, for instance, also has reduced bone density as a possible side-effect.

My reading of the research also does not indicate that it is majorly lacking. Medical research is written in a very conservative manner. Researchers avoid making claims beyond the limits of their research. This can look like doubt or uncertainty when it is not.
"Meritocracy" is a bad enough concept that it's harmful to use the word even to critique.

There is so much "achievement laundering" where wealthy people can pass on status to their children in a way that makes it look like the children earned it. Being able to afford to do an internship at something like the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is an example.

I have lately enjoyed the 2010 TV show "Three Kingdoms" from the PRC which is based on a 14th century novel based on the events at the end of the Han dynasty. Some major themes in it (which must be tolerable to the CCP if not driven by the CCP) are the heroism and villany of figures such as Cao Cao and Pang Tong who turned their back on Confucian values, and how the war triggers a desperate search for talent in a world where opportunities were distributed by family inheritance.

A case I think about is theoretical physics where it can take 50 or more years for an important result such as neutrino oscillations (predicted by a physicist who stole atomic bomb secrets and defected to the USSR) or the Blandford–Znajek theory of black hole jets to be experimentally confirmed.

Albert Einstein made a prediction of light being bent by the sun that was confirmed by Sir Arthur Eddington before Albert Einstein got old. That's a founding legend of physics, but today nobody can get ahead by entering into a dialogue with nature, rather you have endure a brutal job market and please old men until you yourself are old.
In specific to trans identity, I would need to look up some figures, and I doubt there's a ton of modern research out yet. A good research project on this would track not the instances of transitioning, but the percentages of people who transition who later regret doing so.

Affirmative care does drastically and pretty irrefutably reduce the risk of suicide in trans/gender-questioning youth, but that's not exactly what you're asking about, you're asking specifically about whether affirmation and respect will decrease regrets about future transitioning. With trans kids, that's tricky to get data on today, because we kind of have to wait for them to get older to find out if they have regrets.

However, this philosophy is consistent with how we approach many other topics with kids. There's a reason why psychologists offer guarantees of confidentiality, because we've learned that when people don't feel safe talking about an issue they're having, they don't talk about it. This is also the philosophy behind ending the war on drugs, it's the philosophy behind modern approaches to sex education. We are focused on management and education, not repression.

We can also point back towards the debates about gay conversion therapy and look at some of those stats. Gay identity can follow a similar trajectory to trans identity; not everyone who thinks they're gay as a kid identifies as gay when they're older, and vice-versa. Discovering a sexual orientation can be a deeply confusing process. However, we have generally accepted that affirmative counseling for children who are experiencing distress over their sexual orientation is more helpful than conversion therapy or locking down the conversation. It is likely that trans children will have similar experiences.

Trans kids will not stop questioning their gender identity just because they're told to. But if that questioning is happening in complete isolation, then how are they supposed to make educated decisions about any of this? In particular, a child who is wondering what they would feel like using girl/boy pronouns may simply burn with curiosity, rather than trying out the identity and genuinely discovering whether or not it fits them.

As a somewhat over-simplistic analogy, a child who is convinced that they want to play the piano might take lessons for a while and then decide that they don't like playing the piano. Or they might decide that they love piano, and they might go out and buy their own keyboard. Either outcome is fine. But regardless of what they choose, the early lessons will have better-equipped them to make that decision.
Don’t forget zefrank’s exposé on the mantis shrimp: https://youtu.be/F5FEj9U-CJM
Why did you wait till now? Didn’t the first talks of “wait 2 weeks” trigger this fear?
Author here - Very fair that I was being overly contrarian/aggressive but I'm not sure if this invalidates what I think was clearly the point of the article (but maybe not clear). Inspirational stories and cultural narratives matter, especially to young talented thinkers who face challenging circumstances/criticism. Sure this may only matter on the margins, but in a modern science that is increasingly a crapshoot in terms of individual success, we want scientists who have confidence in themselves to think individually. As other commenters pointed out working in a team is not the same as working by yourself, they lead to distinct forms of thinking/working that have their own strengths/weaknesses. Science requires more teamwork than ever, that's necessary and a good thing but that doesn't mean there are costs.
Also why does the fact that Galileo thought some crazy shit mean that he wasn't a genius?
We currently use a huge amount of energy, only a tiny fraction of which comes from wind and solar [1]. Transitioning all energy to renewable is not just a matter of swapping out one source for another. [2]

[1] https://twitter.com/drvolts/status/1405387412168052738/photo...

[2]https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/could-...
in the distribution available on github.com, included are some static binaries for various open source programs. any reason that a static gb binary could not be distributed as well. with linux, i use musl so prefer static to ones linked against gblic.
I don't know why people are downvoting us both, since it's a fairly rational and respectful discussion, albeit about a controversial topic. Have an upvote.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51676020

This is an interesting case that went through the UK courts. Very analogous to OP’s situation had it happened today.
I can only add with my own anecdote. My son dated a girl when they were both 14. This girl had gender dysphoria. She was suffering from a lot of other externalities, but she swore she was a boy. Fast forward 3 years and she is now mature, optimistic, and very much a girl.

Culture seems to be going through a convulsion of sorts and it is taking an enormous toll on our young girls. They do seem to grow out of it, but the phenomenon is real.
Discover and be inspired by beautiful webapp designs
Don't get overly excited, this is only in-vitro assays. There are still a lot of hoops to jump.
Under US law, 'one drop of blood' is sufficient to count as nonwhite. Might be an outgrowth of puritanism, I'm not sure.
Yes, we can point to exceptions.
No. Capitalism is not capable of addressing the climate and ecological crisis.
Would you not want the data and code used to train the model, rather than the trained model itself?

Edit: the Debian Deep Learning Team's Machine Learning Policy explains why.

https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team/ml-policy
I just re-read Xah's notes and all of that rings a bell, but off of comp.lang.lisp Erik could be incredibly kind in helping other programmers. I was working my way through an early edition of _A programmer's guide to Common Lisp_ by Deborah Tatar and got absolutely stumped on the chapter on macros. Erik worked with me over email until we actually found what appeared to be a typo in the example source code and was incredibly patient with my dumb mistakes.
Reader mode also sidesteps the signup overlay on some sites (eg. nytimes) for me.
The fact that you had to say "chill" three times indicates that you're trying to convince yourself, not me.

None of what you said is responsive to what I wrote. I think it's an opinion piece, but I'm not sure.

The issue here is the scientific method. I've listed the things that are required, as I see it. And I've also listed the reasons why I haven't been able to verify it exists here, despite trying for two years.

I'm glad that you like ML hacking, and I like it too. But models aren't a godsend; they're "the most basic, bare-minimum requirements of reproducibility."

Your reaction shouldn't be "I'm incredibly grateful you'd be willing to do this." It should be "You're required to do this, because if I can't verify your claims, your claims might be mistaken."

To leave it off on a softer note, normally I'd bond with you, ML hacker to ML hacker. Because I love ML, and I love hearing what you've been up to in ML. It's the best job in the world, as far as I'm concerned. (Could any other career give you the opportunity to be a developer advocate for high-performance computing in such an interesting way? https://github.com/google/jax/issues/2108#issuecomment-86623... Definitely looking for more examples of "Github Larping," if you know of any.)

If you agree that the scientific method is the reason ML moves forward, all I'm doing here is protecting it.
People expect a positive investigation result. Asking yourself, what kind of evidence would be "enough" to say it is not a lab leak? This is not obvious. Any negative result would beg deeper questions on trustworthiness of the given data, thoroughness of the research in this manner etc.

No negative investigation result is acceptable to the public IMHO.
C++ Sith Lord
From Johnson's How We Got to Now:

> Places that had been intolerably hot and humid — including some of the cities where Frederic Tudor had sweated out the summer as a young man — were suddenly tolerable to a much larger slice of the general public. By 1964, the historic flow of people from South to North that had characterized the post-Civil War era had been reversed. The Sun Belt expanded with new immigrants from colder states, who could put up with the tropical humidity or blazing desert climates thanks to domestic air conditioning. Tuscon rocketed from 45,000 people to 210,000 in just ten years; Houston expanded from 600,000 to 940,000 in the same decade. In the 1920s, when Willis Carrier was first demonstrating air-conditioning to Adolph Zukor at the Rivoli Theatre, Florida’s population stood at less than one million. Half a century later, the state was well on the way to becoming one of the four most populous in the country, with ten million people escaping the humid summer months in air-conditioned homes. Carrier’s invention circulated more than just molecules of oxygen and water. It ended up circulating people too.

* Via: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/06/the-air-conditionin...

Air conditioning was actually originally created for humidity control for printing presses and their ink. Temperature control for humans came later.

If you live in a somewhat humid area, it's worth considering getting a whole house dehumidifier in addition to an air conditioner:

* https://blog.totalhomesupply.com/whole-house-dehumidifier-pr...

The air temperature may be 24C/75F, and thus the AC is not active, but the RH may be >70% and you'll still be uncomfortable / "hot". If you don't have separate dehum the only way to deal with it is to drop the air setting further—in which case you start 'freezing'.
Isaac Newton about 2060
Wow. You're right that's an amazingly badly constructed study. Low-n, indirect-non-patient self-report (parental reporting/perception bias) w/ no cross adjustment or multi-party correction. Biased recruitment practices... hecking YIKES.

Oh, and of course, the methodology was soundly criticised and contextualised in the same journal; imagine that. - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6424477/

> The level of evidence produced by the Dr. Littman’s study cannot generate a new diagnostic criterion relative to the time of presentation of the demands of medical and social gender affirmation.

Surprise.
And lost, and refused to honor the bet.
It feels like you are deliberately trying to conflate issues that don't need to be conflated.

Not even taking transgenderism into account, I think it is a very difficult problem of how to handle people have been born with intersex characteristics in sports. On the one hand, the argument can be made "how is this different than other natural variation that makes someone good at sports", but on the other hand, since testosterone has such a powerful effect, it means that women sports can only be won by those with a genetic abnormality that causes high testosterone (a couple of years ago all three of the top finishers at an international track and field competition were intersex - I'm blanking on the competition but Caster Semenya was one of them).

No one needs to deny their identity as woman to also question whether, in one example, internal testes gives someone an unfair advantage in women's sports.
Should the null hypothesis be that Google discriminates in favor of white, Asian, and male applicants? Or should it be that Google is not discriminating improperly?

It seems strange to put people in a position where showing a datapoint that would otherwise tend to refute a hypothesis (which IMO should not be assumed to be true in the first place) is not enough to be considered as evidence against the hypothesis being true.
Stop using computers/mobile phones/the internet for 2 weeks. That’s it. Your brain will finally get a chance to rest and recover.
Author here - Yes to this.
The article is obnoxious and ignorant.

Some examples of "lone geniuses" are:

- Tesla, who invented the modern electrified world

- Maurice Hilleman, a US medical researcher, who created 40 vaccines, including most of the vaccines we give to children to this day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Hilleman

- Einstein, who published in several areas of science, including on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and relativity

- the Wright Brothers, who pioneered aerodynamics and controllable flight. The first was essential for flight since engines were so underpowered in 1908.

- Hiller and Sikorski, who each advanced helicopters to usable vehicles. You can see Hiller's ducted fan flying saucers in the Hiller Museum in San Carlos, Calif.

- Frank Robinson, who invented the affordable small helicopter, the R22, and created the largest mfg. in the world by unit count.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_D._Robinson

- Wernher von Braun, who got the US to the moon.

- Isamu Akasaki, LED pioneer and Nobel Prize winner.

In fact, you could add the entire list of Nobel Prize science winners to this list.

- military geniuses like Napoleon, Roosevelt and Frank Knox (conquered the world's oceans during WW2), Thomas Cochrane (inspiration for Master & Commander)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cochrane,_10th_Earl_of_...
You are arguing semantics. The specific words that the scientific community uses to refer to reality in their models of reality often change.

For example, “discomfort” in gender dysphoria is a scientific term that implies a level of suffering on par with the “discomfort” one would feel immediately after a major surgery, during the recovery phase, except this discomfort is chronic.

Scientifically, people experiencing gender dysphoria are considered to be in a state of chronic suffering for which there is a medical treatment, called gender affirming care.

Not all gender affirming care results in gender reassignment.
Are you in the EU or California?
Coronavirus species jumps have happened at least twice (three times if you include Covid-19) in my adult memory. Perhaps they’re just not as “incredibly rare” as they once were?
You haven't lived until you've blown up a hedge fund.
Pretty much every symptom can be described that way. Your chest feel heavy? It could be cancer. It could also just be a really common thing among any functioning human being.

A hallmark can't just be considered without the existence of other symptoms. It literally means "If you see this symptom, look for these others to see if it's ADHD." An indicator isn't a solitary rule.

People really like to minimize it because online ADHD conversations don't typically describe the entire diagnosis and its variations. To do so would be far too verbose and extensive for regular discussion.
I agree, I think what I should have said is that the tips you'll tend to find out there are often poorly suited to parents. If you try to hold yourself to those standards, you're going to have a rough time.

But yeah, it's almost a necessity to become better at time management and improving executive function as a parent. If you can't, you lose out in so many areas. It really compounds. I don't know of any sources of good advice on how to accomplish that though; I think families are complex so the 'one size fits all' advice that's more common will tend to cater towards people who have far more control over their environment.

As for the thankless rabbit hole, I was referring to the struggle to meet the standards of others with more time and resources to optimize their lives better. My kids are, overall, one of the most thankful aspects of my life. They're well worth the loss of optimization.
While travelling in some Asian countries, I discovered that in some areas students flood the classic Starbucks so they can study in controlled temperature environment (no for socializing).

As a European, I only understood late in my life how crucial was AC to boost the economical development of some countries like Singapore (among other things of course).

Where would many European countries be without heating?
This is the problem with these services.. they are free and every one was using them without thinking about what they 'should' do, because they didn't knowing any better, didn't understand that the service could change at any moment.. and we lost a generation of important records because people stopped posting on their websites and blogs, and started posting on instagram, twitter and youtube
Ugh, that’s annoying. Not much you could have done about that one. :S
Per your last point, the response can swing the other way and also cause harm in some cases: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51676020
So an "AMAB patient" who takes puberty blockers never develops into an adult man and would require surgery to simulate the appearance of being an adult man if he decided he wanted that?

And people insist that these drugs are harmless?
C++ Threads with Std, Tutorial
https://codesmith.hashnode.dev/working-with-threads-in-c

Simple tutorial for C++ threading with std::threads. Make your CPU work for the tasks you want to complete.