skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great visual design will get your attention, entice you to give something a try, but it sure won't make you use it forever. The product and the user experience still has to be designed well enough to make you want to use something. If the whole package works well, then who is to say you are not using the best product?

You are right in that startups, for example, should build something useful in order to validate the concept, and useful does not always have to be great looking. But in today's world when everyone is competing on design, you would be doing your product a disservice by not investing sufficient time and money in creating a stunning product.
To be fair, most IDEs I have used have been customisable to almost an insane degree. Plus there's usually nothing stopping you from using a combination of the IDE as well as other external tools.
Would be really nice if there was intellisense! Great project though!
he posted it himself. https://hackpad.com/ep/profile/-2QvfuRcguKs4h2YzNropQf
To some extents, I agree with you. On the other hand, I am not sure a background in engineering would provide more source's epistemic authority than one in sociology, in this context. Interpreting Geist is a complex practice, and the presumption to reverse engineering it may be naively and implicitly leading to failure.
best one online editor: Codiad ( http://codiad.com ) based on Ace (ex Bespin by Mozilla) developped open sourcely in PHP, no bullshit around collaborative tools. Simple and efficient.
I know there is a lot of on-going research in learning the 'operating system' of the brain across quite a few animal models. In rats, mice, and monkeys, a lab where I work looks at the neuron level while these animals learn behavioral tasks. Classic behavioral tasks are merging with basic neuroscience and advanced imaging, with the help of computing.

At the neuron level, we are still at very immature levels of understanding, but the path and direction being taken looks very promising.
To be clear, I'm suggesting that someone other than Valve do this. Perhaps an independent organization. Valve could be a member.
Vim with a few select plugins, like NERDTree and Command-T, combined with tmux (until recently used screen).
Broad understanding of how the brain functions it not necessary (and would not be sufficient) to replicate it. To make a model of a brain that runs on a computer, we only need to be able to replicate it's basic building blocks, and then copy the structure of a brain over.

The basic technologies to do this already exist, and are presently used to reverse engineer microchips (among other things). What you do is first freeze a brain, and then carefully slice a few micrometers off the top. Then record all the connections between neurons in the top layer. Slice another layer off and continue.

This would take a very long time, and cost hundreds of billions. It would not, however, require any advancement in technology over our present level. The key technology we presently lack is a computing substrate sufficient to run the simulated brain.
I've been dying for something like this. Since switching to Apple laptops, I can do nothing but listen wistfully as my friends talk about how much they love Steam. The screenshots of Skyrim I see in online reviews don't look anything like the game I play on my Xbox360.

The problem is, I can't imagine playing video games on any screen but a TV or in any setting but the couch. I could probably build a PC box and hook it up to the TV on my own, but I'd much rather just buy something ready to go out of the box. A console with current hardware and a PC-like gaming experience is just what the doctor ordered!
Just in case people didn't notice, the article is from October 19, 2011.
As I've said before, I think Kurzweil's focus on a singular A.I. is misguided... he's missed the target but hit the tree. Much of the exponential growth in technological progress (from the printing press to the Internet) has to do with improving the efficiency of information flow between individuals. I'm thinking that at some point this flow may approach neuronal levels of complexity and speed, at which point the collective intelligence of society (or groups in society) will tip over into something resembling a multi-human organism. It's hard to grasp now, but I doubt that whatever the Singularity ends up being will be easy to grasp at this pre-Singularity stage.

Arguing about brains in boxes just seems a little myopic to me.
Wouldn't those sources of gasoline from atmospheric carbon dioxide still produce carbon emissions? While hydrogen used as a transportation fuel produces water.
Linux as a gaming platform, especially for Valve is genius. There of tons of PC games that with a bit of porting (and adding controller support) can be re-released and re-sold to the console gamers. And as we all know console gamers spend a lot more $$$ than PC gamers. And Valve is going to be in the middle of it all, genius.
They have an event horizon. Everything past that is inside the black hole. Things absolutely can and do pass the event horizon. That is how the mass of the black hole increases. That is also the problem the article is addressing. This creates a paradox in that it allows a single quantum particle to be poly-entangled - something that is not allowed by our current understanding of quantum mechanics.

Therefore, what really happens? No one knows for sure. If the no-drama principle correct (which is implied by Einstein's theory of gravity), in that you cannot feel gravity when you are in free-fall, you pass through the event horizon just fine, and then die when you are torn apart by tidal forces. (Of course, the tidal forces kick in outside the event horizon in smaller black holes - but that's beside the point). If the no-drama principle is correct, then there is a fundamental and insoluble contradiction in our understanding of physics. That's the point of the article.
Is it an idea or something you truly believe in? Is this something that is limited based on when you live and being able to talk to your first clients? I had to move a thousand miles to get where i needed to be.

Can you get into the beta? If so check it out and see where you think they are lacking. Talk to customers before your MVP.. don't do what I did and sink several hundred hours into your MVP before finding out what truly matters to someone that would purchase your product.

Please also remember that just because they are showing a less feature complete or less crappy product compared to your vision doesn't mean that they aren't one commit away from meeting feature parity with you 3 months from now in your mvp .

If this post comes across as negative.. please don't think I'm down on your idea.. please try to consider things from all angles except UI and comparing features.
He explains his options at the end, so I don't know why he is saying it sucks :) JavaScript is improving but is the bloody vendors that keep lacking it behind. That is why TypeScript is awesome, they are bringing ECMAScript 6 to all browsers in native JavaScript form.
Tmux and Vim with Exuberant Ctags, Command-T, NERDTree and few a others. Got my workflow down to the point where all I need is a shell and a web browser.
Well, that statement was a lot more correct even just a few years ago. But we're starting to get a much better grasp on it. In the past 10 years or so we have learned more about how the brain functions than in all of human history. It's true, we're not yet experts, but you're making the assumption that we need to know entirely how the human brain works in order to build something that supersedes it in capability, and this is simply untrue. I don't need to know anything about how a gasoline engine works to build a faster and more efficient electrical engine. In truth, such thinking may even impinge on my ability to do so. The singularity isn't about creating a human brain in chips, it's about a point when the chips are able to process more than our brains are capable. What forms that takes and consequence of that is simply unforeseeable. Simple math proves it's coming.
Sure. It will probably take me a few hours to do a bit of research, but I'll post a list later tonight, and explain the weapons used in many of the well-known shootings, along with their difference.

I mentioned the AR-15 already, because it is a popular weapon for these things. It was used in the movie theater shooting and at the Oregon mall shooting, and probably in others. That being said, there are hundreds of rifles with similar capabilities, so singling out such a weapon would do absolutely nothing to curb the death count in those situations.

Also, it's worth noting that it is impossible to "spray" bullets with a semiautomatic weapon. You can achieve an accurate rate of fire that would surprise most people, but it will still be just a small fraction of what a fully-automatic weapon is capable of putting out. Many times, people who have been traumatized in such a situation will remember things more intensely than they actually occurred, because they are still in shock. It's perfectly natural for people to claim they heard automatic fire, because when you are being shot at, it seems like a hell of a lot at the time.

Anyways, check again tonight or tomorrow, and I'll have posted a better response.
One thing I noticed is that it is very, very lonely. I'm still trying to figure out ways to meet people and make friends, good friends even. No dice.

Maybe I'm just not very fun to be around.
Probably what I miss most about college is living off the same hall as most of your friends, who you're around 24 hours a day. There was always something fun going on.
Them, and more. As we've seen over the past couple of decades, these efforts lead to extreme commodifications of technology.
Its like this. Your laptop is bad. Stop using the old way of designing and figure out a new design.

gl. wp. gg

no re
I use Pycharm for Python. Amazing IDE!
Windows 7 Vs. Planetside 2
The More I Know, The Less I Know
Great looking product guys! My old life was as a Collaboration Researcher and this is far better than many of the enterprise tools I saw in my day. The get-started quick aspect is great and a tremendous decider in which, if any, of these kinds of tools actually get used.
The leader(s) of an open source project tend to set the tone of that community, and so are responsible for it.
Awesome!
In the FAQ they say there is an opportunity for other universities for similar programs in collaboration with mit media lab.

So how would somebody approach his head of institute at the uni he attends for something like that?
Yes. A substantial fraction of the upper classes are quite poor, for many reasons, not least the rising costs of maintaining a family home. Some even turn to TV to help defray the costs, such as Francis Fulford in the series 'The F*ing Fulfords' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fucking_Fulfords). You can probably find clips on Youtube.
Incidentally, the guy creating this is Bunnie Huang -- the guy who designed the Chumby, was famous for Xbox hardware hacking, and did an awesome (open-hardware) MITM attack on HDCP at CCC [1,2].

[1] http://events.ccc.de/congress/2011/Fahrplan/events/4686.en.h...

[2] video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37SBMyGoCAU
I was tempted to click Other since I use Emacs, which is arguably an OS.
[disclosure: I'm as CS Grad Student]

The biggest value of a CS degree to me is to be exposed to the cool work of others.

What I mean is, we have people from all over coming here and giving talks on the kind of things they're working on. Sure, many of these things are more 'academic' in nature (in the sense of not being immediately deployable e.g. a new internet protocol), but I think their work is exploring the boundaries of the current state of knowledge.

To get a feel for what kind of crazy stuff intelligent people are up to. That's the reason I love being a graduate student.
Yup - we are actually using webRTC under the covers for video/audio RTP and webRTC itself uses Opus (or recommends) so we'll probably be switching to that for audio chat when we go that route. Thanks!
Spy Agency Predicts Megahumans By 2030
In `maybe`, would it make sense to check the args passed to the wrapper against the number of args the original function expects? Something like this:

function maybe (fn) {
var expected_number_of_args = fn.length;
return function () {
var i, arg;
for (i = 0; i < expected_number_of_args; ++i) {
arg = arguments[i];
if (arg === null || typeof arg === 'undefined') {
return null;
}
}
return fn.apply(this, arguments)
}
}
I use Vim with the Janus plugin. What I really like about Vim is its ability to be more powerful than any IDE if you take the time to write plugins to give yourself exactly what you need.
There's stupendous profit in every small incremental step towards it. AI research in general has proven to be unbelievably profitable -- even when you fail in your goals (like most AI research to date), every minor partial result can probably be turned into a multimillion business.

Before the AI winter, there was a lot of criticism of how the US govt spent a lot of money on a lot of projects which fizzled out. One of the results built from the ashes of those DARPA projects was the Dynamic Analysis and Replanning Tool, used to optimize and schedule transportation of supplies and personnel.

From wikipedia: Introduced in 1991, DART had by 1995 offset the monetary equivalent of all funds DARPA had channeled into AI research for the previous 30 years combined.
Editor: emacs with a thick, customized elisp layer for things like inserting skeleton code (blank for loops, blank class defa, etc), documentation templates, etc. I work on simulation and visualization tools in C, C++, Python, and when I can squeeze it in some Common Lisp.
Tl;dr: "To succeed in big changes, make the smallest big change you can"
True if everybody has access to strong AI. I doubt that is the way it will play out. At least at the beginning. Whomever invents it first will probably hoard it for themselves as an advantage against everybody else. The technology will eventually spread to everybody else but by that time our economy will probably have adapted.
I've been in the dance world years ago, and I knew several champions. They were all very nice. I suspect that being nice was a very large component of their success. For example, they were always willing to help out their rivals, cheer them on, etc.
It's where the eyeballs are. There's an enormous amount of collective time spent on Facebook these days. If you can capture a fraction of that, even if it's just in the form of brand recognition, that's a potential win.
Good point! <em> would make a lot more sense.
Python Epiphanies [Tutorial]
I use vim because I love the raw editing power. I do use a handful of plugins (Fugitive is nothing short of amazing), and of course I've dialed in quite a few settings, but ubiquity and baseline power is my primary goal over customizability, if it were the other way around I would use emacs.
Everything I write on my blog is covered by the MIT license, so go wild!
A light-weight alternative to jQuery UI Date Picker
ctags followed by Ctrl-T in vim does the exact same thing.
> I do find that mathematical literature is all theory and no application, even with my engineering background. If we had some applications, people would use it more and take it seriously as well and therefore there would be more mathematical programmers.

I have a mathematics background and I see immediately thousands of not-implemented applications when I read mathematical literature (especially the highly abstract one). Thus applications are there.
But getting the abilities to see these applications takes time and dedication. I try to hint lots of colleagues to these connections and applications and get ignored (I could talk to a wall instead - it wouldn't make a difference). The colleagues only want to get their job done somehow and nothing more...
I would upvote this a million times if I could. The whole concept of the "Singularity" confuses hardware with software.

Yes, hardware technology has followed an exponential rate of improvement, and there's no obvious reason to believe that will stop.

But software certainly hasn't. Programmers today still deal with the same issues they dealt with 30 years ago. Separately, we've figured out some cool pattern-recognition techniques, but there's absolutely nothing indicating "exponential" growth in how smart our programs are.

Yet the "Singularity" depends primarily on software, not hardware. And all this talk about getting around it by just "scanning in" actual brains and simulating them on hardware... well that still doesn't show how those simulated brains are suddenly going to get smarter than our own.

(And then you've got a whole lot of human-rights and personhood issues when you start dealing with actual seemingly conscious brains running on silicon, with real childhood memories, real emotional desires and whatnot -- I mean, they would basically be actual people, not some kind of abstract AWS brainpower cluster...)
I love how Physics is like the biggest, grandest game of Sudoku ever played. You can get so far, certain that everything is about to fall into place, and then you reach a contradiction. And what better place to find the contradiction than at the event horizon of a black hole. Good stuff.
If you find an odd situation in PHP due to backwards compatibility or whatever, I highly recommend you just make a wrapper function to do what you want.

Another example of a common mistake with default functionality:

Did you know

json_decode('null')

and

json_decode('{')

both return the same thing, NULL. One is correct, one isn't. The only way to actually tell the difference? Also call json_last_error() to make sure there wasn't an error parsing the json. Pretty inconvenient to do every time (and most people wont). Solution: Wrap it.

At Thumbtack we have lots of wrapper functions which take care of situations where a built-in function doesn't have an interface we like. Most of them are purely for convenience though, not situations like this where the default output does something potentially misleading.
vim is arguably an IDE, because of :make and the ability to jump through build errors without leaving the editor. I don't think one can't debug in vim, but then depending on what you write you may very well not have this need to begin with.
Care to enlighten the rest of the crowd about those elusive "good ones"?
Forced to use an IDE at work, emacs at home.
To make a physics analogy, I don't need to understand gas laws to reproduce them by simulating newtonian mechanics.
The split second decision for me is, "Does it look really nice or does it look really plain/bad." If it's somewhere in between then it takes a bit longer to evaluate.
This would make it unusable for a function that, itself, uses the 'arguments' variable rather than formal arguments.

Function arity in Javascript is a tricky subject when we touch on partial application and other functional programming techniques that act on the arguments passed to a function, but the generally accepted solution is to avoid Function#length and ignore that formal arguments exist.
I bet, at least one brain behind the many eyes reading this, knows how human minds work - at least the significant functions.

Hey, I am talking to you! Time to speak out loud! Tell us how you function.
"[...] observers who are freely falling—whether into a black hole or toward the ground—don’t feel the force of gravity, [...]"

They will if there's enough of a gradient and the observers are not ideal points.

Many years ago, Larry Niven wrote a story
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_Star_%28short_story%29 ) where tidal forces killed observers trying to orbit a neutron star.
Thesis: The singularity must be prevented at all costs.

Evidence: The increasing uselessness of human beings to economic activity.

Evidence: The callousness to economic externalities with biological consequences of existing suprahuman organisms. i.e. Monsanto, Dupont, Keystone XL, the US Government

Conclusion: The singularity would most likely result in the complete extinction of biological human beings.

Nota Bene: Structured like a High School debate contrapositive because that's what the singularity always sounds like.
If only for the integrated FPGA, I'm interested!

One suggestion: it could be made cheaper and maybe more interesting by removing the screen altogether (there's an HDMI port !) to do a C64-like computer, with a tiny smartphone-like internal screen.

We all have multiple screens already - such as tablets or smartphones we carry.
I'm a huge believer in the transformative power of technology, and AI in particular. I don't see, though, why AI is so fundamentally different from nanomachines, "fully programmable" genetic engineering, and "free energy" technologies in either feasibility or in potential impact on humanity.

You might say my problem with the singularity talk is that I think we have ALREADY gone through "technological singularity" using the current, rather flaky definition. We already have experienced technology-driven change which has made the future completely unpredictable from the past. The integrated circuit has already revolutionized the nature of human life. The claim that the future changes will be orders-of-magnitude more important in some way seems difficult to measure in an objective way, which is part of why the topic has a bit of a "code smell" of pseudoscience.

Once I really start thinking about how technology has changed the human condition, it seems to me that the invention of both spoken and written language is actually the TRUE "singularity" because human civilization is radically different from how other animals live, and it is the ability to transmit and preserve information that is the most important enabling technology.

Even if I can upload my brain into a computer, isn't that just an upgrade to the capability I already have, which is to preserve my brain contents by writing and transmitting that information into the future?

tl; dr - Humanity has already experienced fundamentally transformative technological change. We will certainly experience more in the future. Is there any objective way to measure the impact of technologies, and are any potential future changes actually "more important" than those we have already experienced?
The virtual brain could use the real world, just as the real brain is. Just like the Google cars and Watson are doing.
China tightens 'Great Firewall' Internet control with new technology
I liked the part (literally) about the Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA.

Who knows what kind of cool stuff that could lead to?
Yes, but in a sufficiently massive black hole, it is still possible to pass the event horizon unscathed. Thus, the paradox still exists.
For ruby/rails development I use vim and iterm2.
For .NET dev: VS2012 + ViEmu + Resharper
> And while the translation of the genome into a brain is not straightforward, the brain cannot have more design information than the genome.

We know this is mostly true, but not entirely true. While the genome is probably the biggest repository of information driving brain development, there is no hard and fast law saying it's the only one. It's easy to see how a bit of information external to the genome, like "maternal alcohol consumption and lead ingestion are bad," can effect brain development.
I felt the same, until I started seeing my job as not "Do what my boss tells me to" but as "Contribute something awesome to the world." That job is never done - there's always some other project you could be working on, some way you can make your product better, someone else you can help out.

On the plus side, it's a lot more fulfilling than feeling like you put in 8 hours for a boss so you can have 7 hours to yourself. It's like the distinction between work and play melts away and it's all play.