skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> WebGL is cool, but [..] the kind of graphics performance a developer can get by writing straight OpenGL (taking advantage of sophisticated shader models on more recent devices) is astonishing

Why can't you get the same performance with WebGL shaders? Yes, WebGL GLSL adds some security checks, but apparently they only add about 5%. The article here seems to assume there is a huge difference - I'd be curious to know what that is based on.

Is it new shader models not present in WebGL GLSL? If so, specific examples would be appreciated.

edit: expand the question
Zynga exec exodus continues as gaming company loses infrastructure CTO
It's called the "hard problem" of consciousness. In theory, you can map causation from particle-wave interactions to experiential states but that doesn't provide an explanatory ontology. It's a matter of having a valid data type. No data type captures qualities.
New research has indicated otherwise
http://www.thestar.com/healthzone/news%20&%20features/ar...
i think the title of this question ought to be - Dealing with a workplace where engineers frequently leave for other opportunities.
What if we are? We still can't change the laws of physics, rewind time, fast forward events, live forever.

So no, we aren't.
I think that number is very reasonable. Zerohedge.com is very libertarian and they also use the 23% number provided by shadowstats.
The philosophical zombie as a thought-experiment is rapidly being faded away by advances in neuroscience. As scientists get better and better at studying the physical mechanisms of consciousness in the brain, the philosophical zombie will have to emulate those mechanisms of consciousness to such an extent that it will, by definition, be conscious.

An easy example of this would be some recent work done in using MRI to map active brain regions to moral dilemmas. (A quick example: http://www.wbur.org/npr/6636701/the-science-behind-making-mo...)
I'm sorry you feel that way. We just happen to disagree then.

What constitutes science? You must be able to predict events from a theory and you must be able to reproduce them. But there's a third, implied tenet that most people forget about: anyone performing the experiment must come to a consensus on the results of the experiment.

For me, "experience" is easy -- it's the most "real" thing in my reality. Vision, hearing, taste, smell? Those could all be faked some day with advanced enough neural manipulation.

Let me attempt to clarify.

Suppose you have a hypothetical person who sees an apple floating everywhere in front of him. He tells everyone that he sees this apple, but everyone else says "No, you're crazy. There is no apple there." So he takes a photograph of the apple. He prints it out and says "Look! Right here in this photograph is the apple!" Again, everyone says "I see no apple." He can consistently, predictably, see this apple. He decides to even paint exactly what he sees. And when he looks at his painting, he sees an apple, but everyone else sees empty sky.

Is this person crazy? Well, if science is determined by consensus (which it is), then yes, the majority of people would say that he is crazy. But now instead of just this one guy with an apple, let's say that everyone sees a piece of fruit in front of them. But it's a different type of fruit for each person. And they all try to tell each other that there is clearly, obviously, unmistakably a fruit floating right there in front of them, but everyone thinks everyone else is crazy because they can't see other people's fruit -- only their own.

So eventually, they decide to just forget about the fruit. Maybe it's not actually real if everyone else can't see it? (Would a person in a computer simulation see this fruit?) And so, despite everyone obviously having their own fruit hanging right in front of them, they have all decided to say that there is instead no such thing as floating fruit, since no one can come to a consensus about everyone else's fruit existing.

So there you go. That's how I view consciousness. Although I should tweak that slightly -- "consciousness" perhaps isn't the right word. Consciousness can be manipulated with drugs and sedatives. What I am really referring to is the act of "experiencing" something.
woot! guess i have a name for next weekends project now ;)
An interesting question on a relevant topic? Let's close it. Thanks, SO mods.
Couldn't agree more. We have seen this recently with the Facebook app switching to native. I think as time goes on, and as phones get more powerful, it will mean less of a difference, but for now it is better to stick with native. We decided this for our iPhone/Droid apps at http://trackmydrive.com and couldn't be happier!
Innovation in Journalism Goes Begging for Support
See my reply to Bakkot. No amount of science can prove or disprove a p-zombie. Since it's unfalsifiable, it cannot possibly belong in the domain of science. (Again, I should note that I am referring more to "experience" than "consciousness").
I hate responding with such a flip answer, but have you tried Cython? If you have to do some serious munging inside inner loops and need something that is a bit more aware of data structures and the shape of your data I have found Cython to be a nice option for building the equivalent of a Python C-extension module with mostly Python-like code and structure.
People will believe anything.
Strange. When I mute my computer before rebooting or shutting down, it does not make the sound.
I did some light research about the subject after I stopped laughing and crying.

It seems like it depends on the state, there are 13 states that have the "public urination leads to sex offense" regulation. Of those only 2 states have the "near a minor" clause. So 11 states can put you there for peeing in public, no strings attached. On those, you would be at the mercy of the police officers that catch you.

Also, I found out that the reason for the "public urination is a sex offense" is not urolagnia (at least it's not overt urolagnia), but a means to deter the flashers' defense "I was peeing, officer." Not sure it makes a lot of sense.

Disclaimer: As I said, this was light research on the topic, so there might be errors. Sources were mostly Straightdope forums and the Wikipedia, IIRC.
>Or what my database schema changes -- then my code has to move along in tandem with the schema.

Well, yes, but that's true if you don't use stored procedures, too. And don't stored procedures make it a bit easier, since you can update the schema and code all at once (atomically, even, in PostgreSQL)?
Stats on Hackathon - the largest known
Team composition stats on TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon
Regardless of whether or not HTML5 is going to "lag", I think this article white-washes the evolution of the web as an open platform vis-a-vis the desktop/OS. Open platforms and protocols are the result of hard work and people taking risks and building value, not a result of stability in the platform.

The Web and technologies have operated in a disruptive manner with respect to an established platform, and the mobile revolution was about the platform moving to serve modern, networked users. The is counter to silo'd interests attempt to constrain and integrate the web into proprietary formats and platforms (See: everything from active-X/flash to the current mobile platform wars).
مسلسل حريم السلطان الجزء الثانى 2 الحلقة 76
مسلسل حريم السلطان الجزء الثانى 2 الحلقة 76

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مشاهدة مسلسل حريم السلطان 2 الحلقة 76 - تركى مدبلج

حريم السلطان 2 الحلقة 76 الجزء 2 اون لاين
This sounds like Solipsism Syndrome [1]. I used to experience it in my Fluid Dynamics class, convincing myself that no one in the world could possibility give a shit about this stuff, so it must be all taking place in my mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism_syndrome
Are you using big words just for the sake of appearing knowledgable?

"Causation from particle-wave interactions". What do you mean by this? If you're referring to determinism, that's already been ruled out by HUP (unless you support superdeterminism, although few scientists do; t'Hooft is a notable exception).

Valid data type? When did the discussion switch to type systems? I'm sorry, you'll need to clarify what you are trying to convey.
In a sense, PhoneGap apps are actually NOT Web apps, they are native apps built using Web technologies.
I use it all day (maybe 8 hours a day), but I move around a lot. Whenever I'm not typing or reading on the screen (thinking), I walk around. That helps a lot. I sometimes go sit down a bit in other rooms, but basically I can stand all day if I have to.

It took my about 3 weeks to get to that point. For the first few weeks, my feet hurt a lot. But at some point I passed a threshold and it pretty much stopped hurting altogether as long as I can walk around and shift my weight from one leg to the other a lot (I couldn't stand still all day).
Thorium: Energy cheaper than coal
Hi,

I live in canada and can't seem to get sms. I tried my area code with 438 with both 438 and 1438 and they both don't seem to work. I don't receive sms notifications
Did anyone even read his code? The C code gets the wrong answers once its integers overflow. The Python code will produce the correct answer using longs once the integer calculations overflow. Ctypes is the right answer for a different problem.
In current implementations, the shaders running through WebGL are identical to those that are not (outside of ES vs desktop changes). However, there are a couple problems:

1) There's definite overhead on the API itself, e.g. the slow shader compilation times due to the verification, translation, etc. That'll get better over time, but it'll never match the desktop; I personally think a caching approach will be a big win here, but no one has done it yet.

2) You don't have geometry shaders, hardware tessellation, hardware instancing, and a number of other features you get on the desktop with modern hardware. You also don't get the ability to render to multiple targets at once (critical for performant deferred shading).

3) There's significant 'extension lag' as it isn't as simple as just implementing an extension on one chip and coding for that; it has to hit a certain level of penetration before it'll be ratified for inclusion in WebGL, then it has to be made safe and implemented.

Those are the core things holding WebGL performance back (IMO), excluding other browser bits that may get in the way, which aren't relevant to this discussion directly. A lot of this will go away over time, but I honestly have no idea how any of that will happen.

(Disclaimer: I work on graphics stuff for Mozilla, but don't work much on the WebGL side of things; mainly write demo code there)
Good review of new book about Thorium Reactors.
Just a reminder to everyone: the decline of male participation in the economy is a long term trend that started at least in the 1950s:

http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2007/jan/wk2/art03.htm

As the Bureau Of Labor puts it:

"The labor force participation rate of men has been decreasing since the 1950s, having registered 86.4 percent in 1950, 79.7 percent in 1970, 76.4 percent in 1990, and 73.3 percent in 2005. This decline has resulted from various factors. For example, the Social Security Act was amended in 1960 to make individuals under 50 years of age eligible for disability payments."

I have never heard a comprehensive reason for the 60 year decline. It is possible that there is no one reason for the 60 years of decline. Each decade there are obvious reasons for the decline during that decade. For instance, the mechanization of agriculture during the 1950s and 1960s caused many jobs to be lost, especially among African Americans, and many of the people who lost their jobs were never able to find new ones (it can be tough to find a new career if you are 40 years old and have little education).

The loss of the textile industry added more to the decline.

I have not heard a theory about the long-term nature of the decline. Possibly the demographic shift after 1964 (the end of BabyBoom in the English speaking countries) add up to one generation losing their jobs mid-life and the next generation simply being smaller than the previous one? I am not sure. I've never seen that argument made.

Of course, for context, all of this is set off against the dramatic rise in the participation of women in the economy, a trend that peaked for most female demographics in 2000.

Since 2000 there has been a general decline in nearly all demographics.

The USA used to be unusual (for most of the century before 2000) in that it put a very high percentage of its adults to work (relative to Europe). However, since 2000, Europeans nations have seen an uptick in labor participation and the USA has seen a downtick, so the USA rate of participation in the economy is now closer to the norm for developed countries.

Here are the World Bank numbers for men and women in all countries:

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.MA.ZS

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS

(These numbers are interesting but I am curious if the same definition of "work" is used in all countries. In the female rankings, the USA is at 58% whereas Uganda is at 76%. I do not believe there are any nations on Earth where 76% of the females engage in the monetary economy. I'm guessing then that some non-monetary work is being counted in Uganda, but not in the USA.)
Video Games: The Death of Singular Experiences
Ign.com currently banned on Reddit for vote cheating
You got it? Good luck with it!

(I've noticed domain-squatters are starting to grab the good .io names so I figured someone on HN would do something more productive with it!)
With self publishing now, it is likely that unpopular works will persist. Over time there is more of a chance that anything great that was passed over will eventually find it's audience. Whereas in the past that stuff that didn't get published may have only existed as a single or few copies and was eventually lost to the passage of time.
The map-on-a-scroll idea was used commonly by aviators at the time, but their maps were strapped to their leg:

http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/gal102/americabyair/ab...
Anki has a web app for repeatitions, but it doesn't mimic all the features of its Desktop/Mobile apps.

http://www.ankiweb.net/

Anki's biggest goal seems to aim for cross-platform in use (even stretched to the NDS at one point).
> Textbooks and eyeglasses are guarded by copyright and patent

I'm talking about the physical book, not the words contained within.

> When I buy a house, I can make modifications to it.

When I buy software, I should be able to make modifications to it.

> Microsoft probably wouldn't care if I somehow reverse engineered Windows and modified it for myself only.

That's explicitly prohibited by the license. Whether or not you think they'll enforce the license in your case has no bearing over the fact that it does violate it, and free software advocates argue that such licenses cannot be nonenforceable.

In any case, patents are a separate issue altogether. So is copyright, actually - free software licenses are a way of twisting current copyright law into doing the opposite of what it was meant to do: provide freedom.
His First Rule of Business: Don’t Hope
Improving medical technology with a goal of curing currently-uncurable diseases, making health care cheap enough to make Medicare sustainable (perhaps specifically by looking for ways to eliminate 90% of the costs associated with the half dozen or so families of diseases that Medicare finds most expensive), and improve quality of life with better treatments.

Better transportation infrastructure, especially high speed rail. (Notice how the French have better track than the Germans because the Germans put off investment while playing with maglev; Elon Musk might be at risk for repeating the same mistake in the US with Hyperloop.)

Fiber optic cable to just about every building in the world, owned by people who charge at a rate that isn't much higher than the construction cost and don't try to keep charging more and more for higher data rates.

Possibly some more good parks.

We need cheap solar and batteries too, but I think those things are likely inevitable given enough time at this point.
Reviewing a Pinoy Personal Blog
No, I already remap Caps_Lock to Esc - much more useful.
It is far worse than this. For the better part of the history of the world, basic arithmetic is 1 man and 1 woman produce > 2 kids. Those kids grow up and even if one of them is happy to live in their parents' home, the norm, hell, the EXPECTED norm in american society is that the adult children go out and make their own home. How are they supposed to do that when there are no homes available because all their neighbors sitting on the local board decided that you can't build any new homes? This kind of selfishness is infuriating and utterly indefensible. A system that allows such situations to occur is undemocratic and un-civil.
Of the people I've run into who consider the simulation hypothesis plausible, I don't think I've seen any who considered it less frightening and inhuman than a non-simulated universe. Your speculation sounds plausible, but is empirically false.
Same with Russia

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-06-02/world/russia.child.porn_1...
Et tu Matt? Bitcoin Mag Founder Welches on Big Bet
> natural logistical limitations for copying and improvement.

There's also a marginal cost beyond the first unit, whereas for software, there is none.

> I cannot OCR a paper book I own, make modifications to it and then publish it on the web.

You'd be violating a copyright, which is a separate point of discussion, but I'm talking about the physical book itself. You've sold me a bunch of paper bound together, and I'm allowed to modify (or destroy) it, as well as resell it to someone else.
That quote was the sketchiest part of the article for me, because the same math was used to justify the subprime mortgage bubble.

The implicit assumption is that the population of startups is uniform across both the set that YC funds and the set that YC does not fund, such that startups in the latter group have the same chance of being a big hit (modulo YC's mentoring, which is accounted for with the "triple a startup's expected value" clause). But the implication of that assumption is that YC is picking startups at random, and that their filtering process is totally useless!

This sort of math comes up all the time whenever there's a screening process. Imagine that you're hiring for a large tech company, you currently hire 1% of applicants, and you find that among the employees hired, there is no correlation between your interview scores and the employee's eventual job performance. Can you conclude that your interviewing is useless? Should you ramp up hires so you get more workforce of equal quality?

Well, maybe. Because there are a bunch of possible hypotheses that could give this result. Perhaps your interview process is designed to weed out false positives more than false negatives, so it's accurate to the 99th percentile, but then gives no discriminatory power. (Many IQ tests are like this; they're highly correlated with life outcomes up until an IQ of about 140, but beyond that they break down entirely and there's often an inverse correlation with income, happiness, etc. past that). Or perhaps your applicant pool is bimodal: 1% come from other employers and are fully qualified, while 99% are the same jobseekers that every other company rejects. Or perhaps your interview process is broken, and you would do better to find a new one. Or perhaps your interview process is okay, but a number of well-qualified applicants are not even applying to your company.

Which of these is correct? You can't know without randomly sampling the population that was rejected and making an estimate of their quality. This is why all decent scientific experiments have a control, and why financial models get backtested on data that was not part of the training set. Even then, there're lots of things that can go wrong in experiment design, and lots of different ways to interpret data that don't necessarily mean "Fund 10x more startups."
There is no need to slip before the argument is valid, so there is no slippery slope argument.
(Did you make up the fruit metaphor, or was that one I should have heard before? I ask because I felt it was downright epic.)
To be fair, the CEO didn't publicize his response -- the customer did. But the cat's out of the bag as a result.
Real Time Twitter Sentiment 2012 US Election
>Are you using big words just for the sake of appearing knowledgable?

I'm sorry your highness. I didn't realize I'm speaking to an authority here.

>Causation from particle-wave interactions". What do you mean by this?

I mean saying firing of neural circuitry X correlates to experience of Y. Given the right tools you might be able to do that and create a valid mapping of causation.

>Valid data type? When did the discussion switch to type systems?

What you can't do is capture experience in formal language. We'd like to symbolically capture the experience of "seeing blue" for example but no data type maps onto qualities beyond nominal signifiers of our own personal experience.
Amazing how timing (and luck?) matters on whether a submission gets to the top or not.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4487221

Also of note: the algorithm to check URL was already submitted is easily fooled.
As to #1, there's no reason to believe we're the first or only type of simulation. There could well be some life that said "hey, we've been running these simulations of our world for a while, but what if we tried making carbon-based life forms for fun?". I imagine that would happen a lot: I don't see everybody doing exactly the same type of thing on their computers today for fun, nor can I imagine any reason people running life sims would be any different. All I know is that (if I can trust my memory) I'm in a relatively stable physical environment. When you can simulate a lifetime in an hour on commodity hardware, there's going to be a lot of people trying crazy stuff just to see if it ends up being stable.

As to #2, I'm not sure I agree. We've got lots of computer environments ourselves that aren't very lifelike at all, from Conway's Life to Sim-(fill-in-the-blank) to World of Warcraft to extremely specialized (and non-entertaining) environments. To some extent, that's because we don't have the processing power to simulate real life, but even with infinite processing power, I would guess that most simulations would not be perfectly lifelike. There are more lifelike simulations available today, but I don't think they're a majority.

For #3, yes, but maybe you're assuming the main purpose of simulation would be for experiments, and therefore that they're similar to the real world. From what I've seen of my world, the most common use of computers is entertainment, and for this, being different from reality (either a little or a lot) is very important. Research will have human brains-in-a-computer first, but a decade or two later the Playstation 7 will have a lot more of them. It's like asking: you're a master-level chess computer, who are you? You might be Deep Blue in 1996, but you're far more likely to be a chess program running on somebody's PC a few years later.
Do You Need To Be A Jerk To Be A Successful Entrepreneur?