skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A bit late, but a few comments on how this thing actually works:

In their model brain, they build functionality for 10 different tasks. These tasks were chosen to model those tasks used in psych evaluations, cognitive experiments, etc, so that the model can be compared to experiments with real humans. Good scientific choice there.

The user must design the function that she wants. The program then finds a particular network that can implement the function. This is like when you need to pay 55 cents, and you have a bunch of change, you can pretty much find multiple ways to make 55 cents (2 quarters + 5 pennies, 9 nickels + 1 dime, etc).

So for each task, they find a minimal mathematical description of the task in terms of eye movements, visual stimuli. Then, they fit a neural network to that description. This part is interesting neither scientifically nor mathematically, as we have known for 20 years that neural networks are universal function approximators. Look it up on google scholar, this is textbook stuff.

What IS interesting is what happens when they try to build up a brain, putting all these tasks into the same large network. This part is novel: they find that as they implement more and more tasks, it becomes easier to do so because they can adapt already existing components (like Daniel Dennett's exaptation) for use in the new task. This is vindication of evolutionary theory but in the context of cognitive neuroscience. Pas mal, as they say.

But these kinds of details aren't obvious unless you have domain knowledge and you've seen Chris Eliasmith speak a few times, and you've thought, mmm hold on a sec, show me them equations. (which he doesn't usually do).
Was going to delete as soon as I got a screenshot... Needed to post on HN for class. Clearly the app is not done.

Unfortunately there seems to be no way for me to delete this silly post :(
Confession Michael Arrington
> The solid aluminum design is just insanely rugged, especially with the light weight of the Air.

Uh... I dont recommend dropping your mac air.

Speaking as someone who spent multiple years with a thinkpad T60 and a 13in MBA, it's without a question the thinkpad is much more rugged. Be especially careful with the screen on the MBA. If you drop it even a short distance, the aluminum will be damaged, and it might break internal components such as the webcam, which can't be fixed without replacing the whole screen. I love my MBA, but certainly not because it's rugged.
I've had to censor this post to avoid a filter.

> What is a picture of child exploitation?

I didn't use the word exploitation. I carefully used the word abuse.

Obviously there are different levels of abuse. At the more severe[1] end are images where the child's face is clear; where the child is obviously younger than 18 (and probably younger than 12) and where a p----[3] or object is inserted in a va----, an--, or mouth. At the less severe end are images where there is only a single person, that person looks to be 18, that person looks to have been a willing model, and that person is partially clothed.

You say no mens rea required, and that is a troubling aspect of UK law. (What does a sysadmin do if s/he finds an image of child sexual abuse on his/her computer, downloaded by a user? Who 'owns' that image, and who goes to jail for it?) But the courts are happy to use mens rea if it helps - a man with a conviction for child sexual abuse was visited by police, who found a tape he'd made from broadcast tv adverts. He admitted he used this as masturbatory material, and was prosecuted. And "knowledge" is required by English courts.

I'd agree that the law is a bit broken when we're talking about adult looking 17 year olds (a 17 and 11 month old with lots of life experience etc could be sensible enough to make that decision) or young looking 21 year olds. (Someone who is 21 but appears to be under 18 is tricky area.) Or the popular example of "s--ting" - someone under 18 taking a photo and sending that to a friend also under 18. (Several laws potentially committed, especially if there's any persuasion going on.)

I kind of hope that police, prosecutors, and courts are balanced enough to not bother investigation, prosecuting, or convicting someone who has a collection of nude photos of people who are 18 but who might be 17; especially if there's no other offending happening. But I realise I'm being optimistic.

For reference:
The Criminal Prosecution Service has some nice information (http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/h_to_k/indecent_photographs_of_c...)

Since the results of an investigation, charge, prosecution, or[2] conviction are so serious for the suspect it'd be nice if there was a bit of clarity.

[1] All child sexual abuse is severe. So, now we're in that domain we re-calibrate the word severe.

[2] carefully chosen 'or'.

[3] fill in the blanks; avoided spam filter.
Ridiculously down voted.
International team creates The Virtual Brain
Show HN: The Threads Collective - Responsive eCommerce marketplace
There are too many electronic music genres. A slight change to the timing of the drums or the way vocal samples are used should not propel a track into a completely different genre. Does all this come about because people are ultra specific about what they will dance to?
"All the food is poisoned, all the trees are dead ..."
Notice it says "on average". SPDY isn't a switch you flip on to make things faster. Very often, there are low-hanging fruits for performance improvement, especially in SSL: https://insouciant.org/tech/ssl-performance-case-study
To --- when in conversation with a nice lady --- nudge the topic towards the mattress, tickling her curiosity to try it out ;)
BMW new cars search
BMW new cars search – Find thousands of new and used BMW for sale from private sellers as well as from car dealers in Australia. There are many websites that give you much information about BMW cars.
I agree. It shouldn't have been downvoted. Unfortunately it's probably best to avoid that kind of religious discussion on HN, even if you're being calm and sensible.

But to address your point: Is hackintosh (Apple OS X on non-Apple hardware) legal? Is it a legal grey area? Some people may legitimately want to avoid that. But your point is taken - computers and operating systems are tools and people have personal preferences and there's a lot to chose from.
Yep, I kinda like the mattress, but even if I'll get one, I don't want hoodies in the package.
The Science of Enlightenment is a pretty good intro CD. His YouTube videos are great (I've watched all of them) and he also has a home study course you can use. The URL is:

http://www.basicmindfulness.org/
As far as I know, GA doesn't have the real time stuff in the API yet. So you only need to update once per day.

When you say "all historical data" do you grab everything back to the beginning of time? Or does it depend on what dashboard the user has setup?
Good idea. But in practice, how does it work with a bedsheet?
It is better to submit your website when you have something to actually SHOW, that is why it's called Show HN. A landing page is not something to show. If you want to attract people but not play the Show HN card, I suggest a blogpost or something because to me a landing page means nothing. Just another marketplace. Nothing to see.
I wonder how this compares to Numenta's Grok and their Cortical Learning Algorithm or other efforts in this space? I can see this type of software really helping in everyday tasks (like helping to tailor my twitter stream or news feeds and curate them down based on my own taste, etc)...
reference: Numenta Grok: https://www.numenta.com/grok_info.html
Price anchoring / gimmicks for lower tiers? The idea is cool enough to reward on its own, but if you can reward it and get stuff, well, that might push a few up a tier.
+1 for this. I tend to leave everything as vanilla as possible. My .vimrc has 3 lines, .profile pulls in a local JDK and that is about it.
Accelerators Can’t Be Rung Zero of the Venture Capital Ladder
Are there any nice Linux distributions that are primarily based around KDE that I might have missed? I use Kubuntu right now, but it always feels a little like a second-class citizen compared to the mainstream Ubuntu.

Does anyone have any recommendations? The sheer number of distros on Distrowatch is a little overwhelming.
Assuming it is correct to say that antibiotic-resistant bacteria evolve in response to the (over-/ab-)use of antibiotics -

I wonder to what extent opposition to teaching evolution improves the chances of these kind of bacteria evolving. Disbelief in, and/or ignorance of how a process works is effectively giving that process a green light.

Conversely, might the appearance of CRE bacteria might sway the evolution debate?

Or to be more blunt, does a disbelief in evolution increase a nation's chances of collectively qualifying for a Darwin award?
I agree, if you want to do a good job you should go native. Anyway Java is a bit easier than obj-c so should not be too hard. But if then you don't consider it worth the work. Just don't do nothing and wait to see if you can grow enough to hire someone to do it.
It feels very much like Unity3D to me. I bet that's what they did.
Some of them do work in the shadows. Since they're not a social media startup they don't need the big media attention ;-)
I transitioned from Macs to Linux over the last decade and I can remember Mac OS X before they adopted CUPS, printing was pretty grim then, but then again so were many other things in the OS. But you could see the potential, even as people like John Gruber railed against every minor inconsistency. It's a similar story with Desktop Linux and Android.
YA post about making fancy prompts - at least its not about how to make a ssh tunnel ;-)

Personally I'm never using anything, or adding any fancy setting, if it doesn't serve any direct purpose and/or is not clear, simple and efficient.

It's not because I believe "simple" and "efficient" are "cool" or "better". It's just because it's always what made _me_ efficient. I don't lose much time digging configs either, and I scan man's pretty quickly every time I need something.

In the end that means my shell looks boring. White on black. Username, host, current directory, VCS info if any. Colored output for tools that support it in a sane fashion. Merged shell history. That's it.

Defaults are in general sane. That's why they're defaults after all. Oh and redoing my dotfile is ~ 2min from memory and work everywhere obviously. I don't need to care if I'm going to spin a VM, it'll work the way I expect it without having to copy stuff and tinker around.

I do the same for the gui so i generally just run KDE or MATE. Tinkering 3 days with awesomewm or using someone's "super cool" but useless configs.. nope, not my thing ;-)
The Glue Network
So this is a HN-worthy piece of news.. :)
Thanks both for the reply. Yes, I understand what you're saying about the fact that looks like we're underestimating Android using a cross platform tool. We're a small (hope) growing startup, so as Duiker said it's just a matter of resources - developer - for now we can't hire someone to do the work.
Yes I hope so.
With Mixpanel we grab everything back to the beginning of time. How much data is made available for a dashboard (card) depends on your plan.

See details here:

https://bitdeli.com/docs/datasources.html
I wonder why they don't have a single sized one. Because where cuddling is optional on a double bed, it pretty much is the only way to share a single bed.

Also interesting to consider is that it won't fit all types of beds. As with a lattice bottom bed, slices could fall through, and with a box-spring bed the slices at the top and bottom of the mattress could simply slip over the edge.
Editor’s Note: The author of this opinion piece, aka “weev,” was found guilty last week of computer intrusion for obtaining the unprotected e-mail addresses of more than 100,000 iPad owners from AT&T’s website, and passing them to a journalist. His sentencing is set for February 25, 2013.
Totally. I saw it more as him having fun with his image than him being the butt of the jokes.
I think this is a good approach. Concentrate on getting it perfect for Christianity and then later on you can expand.
R.I.P. Frothy Times, A Return To Normalcy
Yes, it is scary. But you forgot to add that give or take half the time doctors don't have the slightest idea of what they're dealing with.

However, the thing gets even hairier when you talk to med students. Most of the one I've talked told me their main reason to learn the craft was the money.

Take good care of yourself, exercise, eat healthy, and don't forget to have sex. Otherwise you're gonna end up in their books as just another entry.
The Jelastic Spotlight: Lez Yeoh and OnlineOne
A whois of the domain points to Warner Music.
Can't put my fingers on it since I haven't read Time in ages but it seems like the format has changed. Seems more bloggish if that means anything.
Wine geeks collect data to grow the perfect grape.
http://aws.amazon.com/free/
It makes sense for an interstellar flight though. If you want to leave the solar system doing say 30Mm/s (i.e. .1c) you expend less delta-v doing a slingshot around the sun than accelerating directly from Earth.
Totally agree but as I said to Duiker it's just a matter of resources, we can't hire an Android developer for now. Thanks for your sincere opinion!
It's like a cross between that and 3D Dot Game Heroes.

http://www.3ddotgameheroes.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhuhdw_9Hnk
Artistic value? The fuck?

"Here's the deal, folks. You do a commercial - you're off the artistic roll call, forever. End of story. Okay? You're another whore at the capitalist gang bang and if you do a commercial, there's a price on your head. Everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink."

- Bill Hicks
Slackware is, and most of its derivatives like SalixOS. The mainline comes with older KDE version: 4.8.5 -- but a longtime contributor, Alienbob, provides recent compilations at http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-releases-4-9-3/
If bacteria can modify the host's behaviour (this is proven), perhaps your hypothesis is a certain type of bacteria's survival vector?
Maybe the next big thing will be a shift to truly useful smartphones, something that enables you to be productive instead of only being able to consume apps and services.

Ubuntu for Android looks like a move in the right direction. http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android
Show HN: My side project Catch a Fishli, a game to catch fish on Twitter
Simple, maybe too simple of a generalization of certain market dynamics. For one thing, all businesses can be broken down to two or more sub-processes, and the flip seems to indicate the fact that there are overlaps between the role of the buyer and seller, or between the supply and demand sides of the market.

What matters is how might one might apply the heuristic to one's business - if it helps you, then power to you. God speed.
I'd honestly like to know how he paid for all this stuff: up to 30TB/day traffic according to arstechnica (costs surely more than 1-2k euro/month), loads of servers - all with the salary of a 20 years old ISP employee?
EFI / Macs / Linux - check out rEFIt: http://refit.sourceforge.net/ (however, I haven't used it in a while, and I notice that the latest news on the site is from 2010...)
The philosophy of AGI is awesome. You might know "A Senseless Conversation" https://sites.google.com/site/asenselessconversation/
OpenSUSE hands down.
Organic material could easily just mean some kind of light oil (even gasoline floats on water)
Your Smartphone Knows You So Well It’s Scary
> Conversely, might the appearance of CRE bacteria might sway the evolution debate?

No. It seems like an easy political point, but there's a lot more to the story.

First, there are far easier and more visible examples of evolution. In UK schools, possibly because it's a nearby example, it is taught that the color of moths in London changed dramatically during the Industrial Revolution because light-colored moths were easy snacks for birds on newly soot-covered walls. There are more colorful examples closer at hand: most of the domesticated animals in the world are examples of evolution by artificial selection: cows today share little with cows 10,000 years ago, and corn today looks nothing like 10,000 years ago.

Second, thanks to #1, the belief is often that "humans (special) didn't evolve from apes (animal)" --- not that species never change. The belief is based on an idea that either evolution started after humans were created, or that even if evolution has been running for 100 million years, there's no way that natural selection could cause the leap from animal to human. It doesn't preclude belief in evolution among animals.

Third, antibiotics are all prescribed by doctors, who are plenty aware of the work of Sir Charles.

And, last, antibiotic misuse is largely a tragedy of the commons. Rational patients who are very aware of the risks of antibiotic-resistant phages will still request antibiotics: they feel the benefit (even if the chance of a benefit to them is small) but the pain of antibiotic resistance is felt by other people.

So, no, it's easy political point but it has more to do with enthusiasm than fact.
Seems to be using properly for me. I've been using it for a month now and I didn't have any issues with it. But that may be because I'm only using the basic plugins which are enabled by default, nothing fancy.

EDIT: I'm using urxvt btw
The Global Village Construction Set - Open Source Ecology
This game has not been hugely successful...well, it only has 10 registered players. I would like to hear your thoughts and ideas how to make it more addictive and fun.
I love this idea and have also been thinking often of similar email-based solutions. Very cool, but here's some feedback anyways.

The main problem is inevitably the syntax. It very quickly becomes too complicated, and with email you have the additional problem that you don't get instant feedback on submission.

In your case, the syntax might be simple enough to not be an issue. However, for many people (me included), it would probably still be easier, less error-prone and quicker to use a web interface with instant feedback. And since the type of person using this service is likely to be quite fast and proficient, there's little advantage to your solution over a web-based interface.

I do think there's a way to add value for users like me, though. Three things I like about email could be leveraged (more):
1. I always have email open
2. I tend to use email for quick, short messages that have more permanence than chat.
3. I tend to use email to keep track of things. For example, I don't open my billing app (Billings OSX) to see if I already sent out an invoice, of if it's due. Instead, I just search in gmail to see if I sent out the invoice, and when.

What you could add to this project to make it worthwhile to me, and I suspect many others, is the idea of partial invoices. I would send an email with one or more items, and these would then be added as items to this 'account'. Finally, I can send out an invoice with the total items by logging into your web interface, or through email.

It would greatly benefit me to send an email with something like:

"50 mins, implement login system, clientname"

It would be vastly preferable to my current approach where I load up the application, navigate to the client, and add the item, or alternatively where i add this item to my task app.
Charles Babbage's difference engine captured in gigapixel images
Agreed.

From experience (broken leg), any compression on your body including limbs leads to a shitty night's sleep so I don't think I'd want to wedge bits of my body in gaps then lie on them.

My other half would also hate this.

The best night's sleep we've both found is on a bed which is pretty much like a piece of concrete with a sheet on it :)
Way to get maced :)
I think that what is important to note is that their only evolutionary advantage, and thus the main reason they spread, is their resistance to antibiotics, in normal conditions they would have a quite big chance of losing in competition with other bacteria. As soon as antibiotics are used, the competition dies and they can proliferate. This means that the best prevention method is to use antibiotics as rarely as possible. Let's remember that the same bacteria that cause infections, can ordinarily live on our body quite harmlessly.
For those trying this tool the IP prefix is 5.0.0.0/18.

29/11/2012 10:20 to 10:30.
Btw, for more details about what powers Bitdeli, see http://weusethat.com/bitdeli/

The backend is mostly in Erlang. The frontend is made of Backbone, D3, Bootstrap.
Genuine question: Couldn't we all just move to HipHop if the PHP internals are so bad?
I desperately need a laptop for freelancing as my current one is falling apart and I can't afford to replace it at the moment. If you don't use yours, perhaps you could give me a discount or something?
Right on. I second these sentiments. First, keep up the good work and best of luck moving forward. Very good that you're also reflecting on your successes and failures - always be learning.

The most challenging piece of a new business is, well, new business. And it's about growing your value proposition organically, one customer at a time, and refining the business. Analyzing bump in media attention won't really help you on that piece of the search.

Once you've nailed down the search, and you're simply focused on getting more publicity as you scale, then perhaps that sort of analysis will be of more use. But, I doubt it.
GNU Guile 2.0.7 released
Cheap BCBG Dress
I'm inclined to agree.

Getting support issues nailed with the .Net framework has started to become a PITA in the last year or so. It does feel like they are winding it all down.
I've only ever seen people advocate for tmux locally who can't (or don't want to) run something like xmonad as their window manager.
>An ISP is a legal entity that has a certain relationship with its customers. This includes identity and at least some form of monitoring (logging and cooperation with authorities).

This a truth that is really bad for society, and goes against every form of common carrier principles made over the last few hundred years (ever since the postal service started). Is't it a bit odd that as soon humanity was able to identify and monitor everyone, it suddenly became the moral obligation to do so?
You mean the Road to Wigan Pier?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier
Right. If you think about it, it is just about supply and demand and how they overlap.
Enjoy the time off & Merry Christmas! Good luck at Coverity.
I too would pick it up sooner if there was an (almost) free plan with some strict limits. That way i could use it in say a hobby project or something that's still in beta and figure out if it works for me before running up hefty costs right away. This is a product phase where usually stuff like hosting is free still (Heroku and such have free tiers) and $49/month is suddenly a lot in comparison.
The browser you loved to hate
Fuck Bill Hicks. This is cool.
...which could learn a scene segmentation using environmental cues by mere repeated observations of different scenes, as a child does?)) Come on..

It is not theoretical limitations why we cannot build anything like brain, it is complexity and amount of details. There are very good theoretical foundation by Marvin Minsky, so, we could model how, but unable to implement anything but most primitive tasks, like hand-writing digit recognition, or how to balance a body using sensors and motors.

In general, it is possible to solve simple tasks, which are successive approximations, but as long as we come to creation, instead of recognition, we are helpless.

The key notion here is that a brain is, presumably, analogous, not digital machine, and what it does isn't a computation, it a training, the same way a child trains itself how to hold her head, then sit, then stand.