skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> For someone who appears to have some insight , I am surprised you are mixing up your "terrorists"

Can you let me know which specific part of my comment makes you think I'm "mixing up my terrorists"?

> There is a fundamental diference between a group like the Taliban whose primary focus appears to be "taking their country back" , and characters like Osama who have delusions about being holy warriors in some imaginary battle with the west.

Agree totally. Both the Afghan Taliban (who from what I understand of the current situation, are attempting to cut all association with Al-Qaeda) and the Pakistani Taliban share a relatively hardline interpretation of Islam, but that's about where the similarity stops.

The posted article is about curbing fundamentalist Islamic views in Pakistan through movies. My comment was basically saying that while fundamentalist Islamic groups like the TTP operate and recruit in the manner that they do in rural Pakistan, movies aren't going to make much of a dent.

EDIT: Clarification.
BBC Horizon - How big is the universe?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dne6rnITayI

Interesting.
I don't get your tuple example. If you don't use the tuple operator - the comma - why would you expect to get a tuple?

People trot Python out as the gold standard of language design

Who?
There is no comparison of labor costs in the article. I suspect a union worker in New York City makes more money than most European government employees.
In all honesty, that's not just a government thing or just a US thing. It just seems to be the nature of RFPs everywhere. The bit I found hilarious in the GP message was not the idea of tailoring RFPs to a single company, but that this company would also get paid for the RFP writing stage. In the private sector it seems to be expected that the vendor has the decency to do at least that part for free :-)

(The first time I was involved in writing an RFP for our own product, we kept on cringing as we piled more and more obscure features of the system into it. Anything that had any practical use at all was fair game. And in the end we were congratulated by the customer for how neutral and fair we'd made the RFP look like. I still boggle at the thought of what the unfairly restricted version would have looked like.)
Infinity is not a number.

There is no room 'n+infinity'. There's just not such a room, anywhere, even in principle. Each guest n can move to room n+1 because the guest there is moving to n+2. This works. That's the point.

And you couldn't, in fact, tell the guests to run down the hallway to find an empty room: There is no empty room until you move everyone.

Infinity is counterintuitive, you say? Well, yes, that's the point of this illustration.
If you're going to stop by General Assembly, I work for a company called Viggle on the 11th floor.
joe@viggle.com is the best way to reach me.
I don't think that photovoltaic is an essential step on a grid perspective. The production of PV cells costs a lot of energy, produces a lot of CO2 and requires a lot of nasty chemicals (zB HF). The prices are only cheap because of massive government subsidies and in the EU because of silly laws, that force grid operators to accept every bit of solar energy despite what the plan says.

The best way would probably to invest in thorium and other modern nuclear technologies. But that's not desired. Waterpower is limited by nature. Currently the real alternative seems to be wind and depending on where you are solarthermal and geothermal. Especially massive offshore wind/wave plants. But all of this requires a restructuring of the power grid and massive pump-storage plants.

And I don't think c2 was considering diesel as a future alternative but just trying to give an idea about the size requirements.
That's complicated. While a computer cannot, strictly speaking, have an infinite amount of memory (unless my understanding of physics is off-kilter, which is entirely plausible), computers do have an arbitrary amount of memory. Put another way, I don't know how much memory any given computer can access; for any computer you give me, I could imagine a computer with more memory. (Again, physics intercedes, so this is also something of a thought experiment.) So you can think of Turing-completeness as the limit of what a computer can do as you increase its memory.

To illustrate this fairly viscerally, a modern computer can access the internet and use an obscene amount of memory which will only go up in the future. We don't know how far up it will go, so modelling it as infinite makes sense.

Also, as another thought experiment, what if the universe is infinite? And what if it contains an infinite--or at least quickly expanding--amount of matter? Then a computer could effectively have infinite memory. Unfortunately, I really can't comment because I know even less about physics than I do about math :P.
Nice post.

the number of programs we can write is countable; the number of functions we can write over interesting domains (like natural numbers or integers) is not countable

You should edit and rewrite "the number of functions we can write over interesting domains" as "the number of functions that exist over interesting domains" - it tripped me up.

So we have managed to show, in a fairly simple way, that there have to exist undecidable problems.

I don't think that this is correct. I had to check Wikipedia on decidability:

There are two distinct senses of the word "undecidable" in mathematics and computer science. The first of these is the proof-theoretic sense used in relation to Gödel's theorems, that of a statement being neither provable nor refutable in a specified deductive system. The second sense, which will not be discussed here, is used in relation to computability theory and applies not to statements but to decision problems, which are countably infinite sets of questions each requiring a yes or no answer. Such a problem is said to be undecidable if there is no computable function that correctly answers every question in the problem set.

I don't believe that you're talking about the first meaning, from formal logic. As for the second meaning, it does not apply either, since your "problem set" is not countably infinite.
Solar is usually a good investment, especially when you can start selling your excess back into the powergrid for a slight profit. One of the current barriers to solar is the cost -- I think Apple have more in the bank any other company right now.

As for "why there", maybe that was one of the sunniest parts of the US. Maybe Apple has a datacenter nearby or will soon build one -- either for expansion of current cloud services or for new services.
No, a human could not. Similarly, No human nor computer can name all the real numbers.

Luckily, it turns out that there were only ever be a finite number of questions ever asked, which require only finite answers. Similarly, the halting problem is solvable on finite memory machines, aka the only kind that exist.
I really learned a ton during this hackathon and want to share everything I can with the HN community. Let me know if there's anything I can add!
X11 Window System Turns 25 Years Old
Here's perhaps an easier to understand proof.

Let A be a countable set. Now, suppose that there was a surjective function (one that hits every element of P(A)) f: A -> P(A). (Note that f takes elements of A, and produces subsets of A.)

Now, define Y ⊆ A as follows: For all x in A, x is in Y if and only if x is not in f(x).

Thus, Y, which is in P(A), is distinct from every output of f, and so f is not actually surjective.

This means that no surjective function f: A -> P(A) exists.

This is a generalization of Cantor's Diagonal Argument (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diagonal_argument).
Don't even try to hang out with normals. Hang out with the Hn crowd and be a noob.
yeah, doing better now. i tunneled around until i could reach them and paused the service
Yep, in Belgium you get: http://imgur.com/7qAwh

I'm surprised - I wonder if it's the same thing in other EU countries?
i'm confused - the terminology in the article seems fine to me. are you implying otherwise (am i mistaken?), or do you just intend to post this every time power is mentioned?!
This shows that, e.g., there are uncomputable functions, uncomputable sets of natural numbers, etc.

But I don't think it's reasonable to say that this shows that there are undecidable problems, because for something to be called a "problem" it has to be something you can actually state -- and there are only countably many of those, for exactly the same reason as there are only countably many programs that might solve them.

It's true, none the less, that there are undecidable problems; for instance, "given a computer program in such-and-such a language, does it always terminate in finite time whatever input you give it?". But you need a more sophisticated argument to show that.

Similarly, there are only countably many properties of natural numbers that you can write down in any formal language, and this sort of cardinality-counting argument won't let you prove that any of those are uncomputable. Some of them are, but again you need a more complicated argument to prove it.
http://m.cnngo.com/seoul/life/sin-bundang-line-opens-end-sep...

It could just be for the 17km most recent portion but still...the cost per km is a fraction.
A Real Jobs Plan
no, you probably have some malware doing that, or your router is inserting these.
Not a downvoter, but this theory gets tossed around in bars and over dinner in LA sometimes (LA was one of several cities where this scenario played out).

Short summary, it's not clear, in LA at least, if the GM/Goodyear "intentional destruction" scenario really did the Red Line in. The ridership had been decreasing for several years before the purchase of the Red Line. Long-time residents say predictable things -- autos were more convenient and faster than streetcars.

Short of doing your thesis on this, it will be hard to separate the truth from the legend on this story.

(Not a public transit hater.)
Except Engineers have a fairly narrow cost range. Something like 50k - 200k except add in Benefits, Management Overhead, Resources (computers, software, office space etc.) are more or less flat and it's really only about a 2.5x cost increase from fresh from a no name school to some of the vary best in the field. Add in communication overhead if you let the team grow and unless you have really simple problems easily solvable by recent graduates it's best to focus on an experienced team.
Rather, I habitually confuse the countable with countably infinite. For example, I said the set of computer programs is countable when I really meant countably infinite. Moreover, the set of inputs (which are also finite strings over a finite alphabet) is similarly countably infinite. So we can't write programs for every possible function from strings to strings.
The problem is that the internal technical agency needs to avoid regulatory capture and stay competent while never actually doing the work themselves. None of the current solutions of regulator vs. private enterprise setups work great right now.

Personally, I wonder if the best way to keep the system at a higher efficiency would be to have a public works departement which is allowed into bidding alongside private companies. The public works department would intentionally be kept too small to handle all the work needed, but would serve as a similar competitive check as a regulatory agency. Because it's in competition with private bidders, regulatory capture is more difficult, and technical competency is maintained because they're actually executing projects.

I would really love to see a setup like this for mobile broadband too.
>Go somewhere where you will be happy

So amazingly important. Read who's your city by Richard Florida.
What exactly do you mean by "strong AI"?

The usual meaning is something like "a computer or similar system that does all the same things a human mind does, or better".

I think you're taking it to mean something like "a computer or similar system that can correctly answer absolutely any question you put to it". So far as I know, no one thinks that's possible.
Ask HN: Recommended Domain Backordering Service?
For those who have successfully gotten a domain through a backordering service...which ones do you recommend?
"I don’t think Linux is it, because there are a few good distributions that actually are user-friendly, but at its core it’s made by nerds for nerds. For people who understand computers, it’s awesome, because you can control the entire computer. For corporations or families, it’s not really what they want. They just want to be able to use the computer in an easy way". This sums up my thoughts on Linux - yes, I consider myself a geek, but at the end of the day, for >90% of my computing needs I just want something that works. I find the idea of Linux awesome, and my web-dev work relies on it, but for my general computer it just isn't what's needed.
At least not all of them - I can see the page without problems (Germany).
NFLScoreBot is a failure. But I'm okay with that.
Nope, I wouldn't even consider that. Firstly because K.I.S.S. and secondly because you've exchanged a relatively small data "cost" with a much larger storage and processing "cost."

You've had to have a database of everyone's contacts and then be comparing X with Y every few connections...
OK I guess what I'm missing is how finite strings over a finite alphabet are infinite? Edit: never mind I was confusing "finite" as meaning "bounded".
I think the core issue is what constitutes "strong AI". This is a philosophical question--after all, all philosophy seems to deal with is arguing about the definitions of stuff (I kid, I kid).

I've always taken "strong AI" to mean something fairly non-mathematical--an AI that is at least as intelligent as a human, except ideally faster and less quirky. This is obviously possible as humans exist! (Maybe it requires some nigh magical hardware, but that's a different story.)

What exactly do you consider "strong AI" to mean? (I'm genuinely curious and not trying to argue against anything you've said, to be perfectly clear.)
Whilst I agree some of the choices they've made for Qt5 are right now not great, there's no forced upgrade to Qt5. Qt4.8 will still see fixes, the source is there, all will be well.

I do get where the ranter/writer is coming from, it's one of the reasons I'm holding off on going Qt5 for any big projects.
The difference is that SV is one of a kind. Instead, government technical agencies and unions are almost everywhere, so making comparisons looks very fair to me.

And that's not to say that unions are always "good". I for example have many misgivings about unions here in Italy, but saying that all problems come from them is just trying to find a scapegoat imho.
No, the BOM is the price of all the components at the expected volumes of the given manufacturer.

That's like saying the cost of dinner at a fancy restaurant was the shoppers grocery bill. There is the staff costs and storage/movement costs as well as all the rest of the infrastructure to add to that.
But it does run through one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

See Manhattan Community Board 8 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_densely_popula...
That's not exactly what I said though. I didn't say "run yourself." What I said was, "Run this code with this input, and then do something different." A human could certainly do that. A strong AI should certainly be able to.

Hence it can't be defined in terms of code and input.

Not a problem for humans. My code and input are massively inaccessible. Modeling them, especially modelling all the input I've received--could involve modeling a big chunk of the universe. Whether or not they're even deterministic is an open philosophical problem. I'm pretty safe from being asked to "run" myself.

Not so for a simple Strong-AI chatbot, though. If it's just a program a computer can run, if you can enumerate all the input . . . then by definition, it can't handle a simple request that any human would be able to handle. Not strong.
Here: you can talk to yourself

here is what I would call an uneditorialized composition of the image you linked

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/prokc.21676/?co=prok

..........

Now, take a look at this image from Prokudin-Gorsky [as per the linked HN article]

http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bi...

...........

And Here: you can talk to yourself (again) as a control

I took the time to download and produce my own take on this image. Linked here:

http://imgur.com/wHWmu
Compared to Hetzner. Not a cloud provider, but a root server provider. It's also more expensive than Strato - also a root server provider. Of course, not with the same availability, but for most startups it's more than enough.
My guess would be that the goal was to encourage cross-platform developers to work on the Android version first. Am I close?
Honestly, the reason my explanation didn't make sense is because I didn't explain it. I just took a countably infinite set's powerset's not being countable as a fact because it was mentioned in the article.

Now, the fact that the set of functions from X to Y (usually written as X → Y) is uncountable if X or Y is countably infinite I did try to explain but failed :P.
A chat program that hold up a conversation as intelligently as a human would be able to. And I suppose it needs access to the command line.
Works fine for me. I'm using enta.net for access, and it's completely unfiltered as far as I'm aware.
Huh? A subset of an uncountable can be countable, obviously.
Integers are a countable subset of reals.

The set of function X -> Y is size of Y to the power size of X. A small set of functions on X is the set of boolean functions on X is equivalent P(X), as it is isomorphic to the set of subset of X (each function f_i is just the function "is x a member of X_i?")

The reason that P(integers) is uncountable is due to a diagonalization argument, given any countable list of sets of integers, it is easy to construct an set of integers not in that list (just take the union of each sets smallest (positive) non-member, which is possible since strict ordering is always a well-defined concept on a countable set)
Right, good observations. I'm being more than a little loose with some of my terminology.

"Undecidable" problems are usually defined in terms of "languages". That is, a language is a set of string, and the problem is to decide whether some particular string is in this set. For certain sets, this is not computable, so they are called undecidable.

However, this is isomorphic to just running any sort of program, so I just took "undecidable" to mean any function from strings to strings that you can't answer with a Turing machine. However, I definitely agree that I could have been far more clear! It seems you can't just read my mind, and I'm not sure if I can really blame you for it.
Facebook explains what's wrong with the mobile web
Nothings free. I think if the RFP writing is free - the project is likely common enough that other projects serve as a template for the bid. If the project requires unique design & analysis to bid correctly, then the cost has to be built into the overall operating cost of the company - either by charging for the RFP work, or folding into the project execution profits or at risk as a future template for other bids.

The worst case is if the project is truly one-of-a-kind not-repeatable not-transferrable. That's why the US gov't pays qualified defense contractors for some projects at the rfp stage. e.g. the last fighter contract paid for full flying prototypes from two final competitors.
Hah, yeah, I wasn't paying attention there. I realized my argument was flawed in the shower and was faced with an unpleasant dilemma--do I run, dripping, back to my room to fix it, or do I finish my shower? I naturally took the second choice :P.
Same shit in Denmark.

Oh was, now I run Google DNS.
>and when they couldn't make up for lowball bids using change orders, they went out of business.

Yeah. Unfortunately, this also adds to the cost of projects massively. One of the reasons I like the practice of throwing out the lowest and the highest bids. That method doesn't work in every scenario, but when you have enough firms competing it can really protect the owner, as well as the winning contractor.

I used to drive in the Boston area in 95-98 and dealt with the Big Dig daily for years. Shudder.
No. I'm not asking it to do the logically impossible. I'm asking it to run a program and then do something different. That's well within the range of human abilities. You don't even have to be a very smart human.

It's reductio ad absurdum. I'm observing that if it did have source code it could run, I could ask it to do the impossible. I'm concluding that it either can't understand the request (and I think that's a pretty low bar for a strong AI--heck, I could write a shell script that runs a program and returns something different), or it can't run the code.

Hence, it can't have source code.
My Mac can run Mac OS X in a VM and begin to execute the original Mac's inputs. It just won't finish.
UCSB Researchers Demonstrate That 15=3x5 About Half of the Time
Working to change the world
I was referring to the non-encrypted, non-login search. There seems to be no way to opt out of it.

And it's been happening for a while in this setting; The new thing that started in the last day or two is that they are being sneaky about it - replacing the HREF in the link as soon as you click.

Other posters on this thread have also noticed this behaviour.
It was actually a muddled and incorrect proof. Joshzayin gives a correct proof below.
I guess you are asking this question in reference to "my computer has not had a virus in years".

By the naïve measure of "my antivirus did not ever find a virus", which might not be 100% reliable, as the article points out. However, it should identify viruses eventually, though possibly too late. But it didn't.
For those two specific examples?

1. Town Hall. Instead of building a new building, rent office space somewhere else that was privately built.

2. Public School. Same deal -- taxpayers pay more per pupil for public school than they do for private school, so send the kids to private school and close the public school.

There's no point in getting on to Government for being inefficient in a system like the US, but we can get on to them for doing the NIH thing by default. When the private sector does something better, LET THEM DO IT.
"and now you have another large government bureaucracy which isn't so popular these days": That is exactly my point. Of course, if being a civil servant not only pays less (as adestefan says), but it also brings the stigma of being "just a bureaucrat", you're not going to have very good people there.

But things don't have necessarily to be so: Serving the common good is a very motivating goal for many people; not everybody just goes after the biggest paycheck. At least where money isn't the only measure for everything.
Why don't you support illegal activity?
I love how there's a certain amount of rational explanation and then the closing one line "the reason I'm so pissed off, blah blah blah". It's genuinely funny for some reason :)
Youtube and the anti muslim video.
Here are some interesting questions on the Hilbert hotel which boggles my mind. Shortly, If you can keep as many rooms as you wish unoccupied, can you still claim your hotel is full?

(1) Example, if you can move everyone from N to N+1 or (N+5); and get an unoccupied room for new reservations, can you still claim anyone that your hotel with infinite rooms is fully occupied?

(2) Or is a fully occupied infinite-roomed hotel an oxymoron, or a self-contradictory dasein; which can not exist upfront?

(3) Or is it better to call an infinite-roomed hotel both fully occupied and fully available, a superposition of both predicates, or un-predicatable?
Graph 0.75^(log X) : http://www.google.com/search?q=0.75%5E+log+x

Anyway, DC current is still mostly a magnetic interaction. Actual electrons rarely get above a few cm/s.