skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree with you in principle, however, their simulations are approximations, not identical.

From their website FAQ:

Q: Do you believe a computer can ever be an exact simulation of the human brain?

A: This is neither likely nor necessary. It will be very difficult because, in the brain, every molecule is a powerful computer and we would need to simulate the structure and function of trillions upon trillions of molecules as well as all the rules that govern how they interact. You would literally need computers that are trillions of times bigger and faster than anything existing today.

Because this will only be an approximation, it means that certain hard-to-define grammatical properties of spike-trains (e.g. "neural codes" as opposed to "rate codes") may be completely lacking in the simulation. Do these "neural codes" exist? At this point we do not know.

If it turns out that the brain does utilize complex neural codes, and that they are not being accounted for in the simulation, then the simulation can be no more than gibberish which happens to share many low-order statistical features with the real thing.

To illustrate this point, here are some examples of pseudo-English sentences automatically generated by a purely statistical model (n-gram model where n=2):

Richard Beesemyers, formerly raised sagging candidate to the Friday officially forecast at the project.

A hearing appeals.

That bank handles most notable exceptions to buy time for reconsideration Wednesday in decades, is the B& Coopers, to discuss international theme for the violin away as the wages of the power plant near classic chemise.

It could have been observing the 65 to back Tuesday.

And fourth, there is a full report, Wagner said.
Ask HN: Ad Networks you have had success with as an advertiser.
Ad Networks you have had success with as an advertiser. Thank you.
"When you look at it from that perspective, it’s a no-brainer. You sue everyone and everything you can. If a 65 year old woman’s grandson downloads a CD of songs from Sesame Street on her computer, you sue her, sue the kid who spawned the little bastard, take the grandkid to juvenile court, and sue everyone on their block just for being within a reasonable proximity."

Perhaps not a stupid course of action, but certainly a scummy one. So the sue-happy recording industry CEO isn't stupid; he's just a scumbag.
Symptoms I'd add:

1) Recency bias

2) Mistaking "Easy to have an interesting debate about" for "interesting".

That last one's a fine line, so to clarify, an example might be "Twitter's impact on X" vs. "Friendfeed's use of MySQL to store schemaless data"
sounds like an appeal to authority just got countered with a tu quoque
I look forward to it. And by the way... The people second-guessing Toronto's Mayor David Miller? Obviously they're idiots!
First-Mover Advantage Is About Compound Interest, Not Market Share
Hacker News Disease? This issue is as old as the oldest of: armchair coaching, backseat driving, parody ballads, cocktail parties, in-laws, or op-ed columns.

What he's really saying is that he doesn't like hearing people's opinions when they're not experts, especially if they're condescending, dismissively rude, or disrepectful. I feel the same way, but not enough to write a long post on it-- I'm more of the type to provide my own comment for temperance or move on to a thread where people are being less judgemental and know-it-all-ish.

I think his best bet, on a site like Hacker News, is to avoid reading the comments for border-line inappropriate posts about YouTube takedowns, Disney acquisitions, international trade, etc. All the hacker-specific topics are bound to have some experts floating around here, though.

When there's not an expert on a given topic, I do like to hear polite advice from other smart people that may have had an alternative idea in mind that didn't occur to me. This site has always been good about that. It's one of the benefits of having smart people floating around since knowledgeable people aren't always handy.
The Online Ad Recession Is Officially Here: First Quarterly Decline In Revenues
Mowing, putting the cut grass in plastic bags, and then burying them in a landfill would probably be the most "green" way to go, if you were irrational enough to think it would have a big impact.
It is always interesting to read an article by someone that doesn't understand the software much less development.

"Java's creators borrowed ideas from the widely-used language known as C" "C" not so much. Weird the article doesn't mention profitability.

"What turned Java from a modest evolution in computer language to a full-scale business phenomenon was savvy marketing by Sun."

Really - Java's success was despite the marketing that was applied. The Java Community Process and the alignment of big partners drove Java's success. Not sure where Java would be if it wasn't for J2EE and the application servers.

Java didn't make money because there isn't any money in development tools and even less in languages.
Do I Have Swine Flu?
This article also shows just where we (non-journalists) stand on the food chain compared to those with direct access to the mass media machines. We are nothing. There is no mechanism whereby a blogger can force an establishment journalist to give credit where credit is due. The legal system will not help you. Sue, and you will be fought vigorously, and exhaust whatever meager savings you might have on legal fees - with no guarantee of a win.

They have the real power and they know it. If you, an outsider, have some insight which the mainstream press considers valuable (a great rarity!), it will be stolen and attributed to a "respectable" figure. And there won't be a thing you can do about it.
Because I really like J.J. Abrams, the writers, and many of the actors on Lost, and in some small, small way I want my act of watching their show to reflect positively on their compensation.
Winery offers $10K per month job
What I should have written about was macro hacking and embedded languages and so on. That was what I really studied in grad school.

I doubt you were the first person to write a thesis which was unrelated to what you spent most of your time studying, and I know you weren't the last. I spent two years researching parallel computing, and then ended up throwing a thesis together out of two months of work on string matching and delta compression.
Can't hear his voice even with volume turned all the way up... Ugh. Seems like a good webinar.
I think it's safe to say that people posting here have the assumption that they're talking to a bunch hackers giving their opinion, and not getting legal council.

The enforcement of pseudo political correctness by having to post IANAL at the front of every opinion that may have even remotely looked like legal advice is part of what degraded the quality of Slashdot's comments way back when, if you ask me. Of course you're not a lawyer, this is not a legal community.
Not to mention the fact that "legal" posts on HN are more likely to be prefaced with "I'm not a lawyer, so don't take my advice seriously".
I read it, and kept wondering if he was saying that if we're not formally trained in whatever the issue is, we should assume it's valid simply because the people involved are formally trained.

It seems that it would be dangerous to take this view very far. Experts should be given weight in a discussion because they have better arguments, not simply because we assume they know what they're talking about...

I may have missed some subtleties, or the whole point :).
Ahh, I missed most of it. Hopefully its posted afterwards.
OK, I can understand Matt's rationale for the RIAA suing file-sharers, but I'm having trouble applying the same reasoning to them suing a person who doesn't own a computer at all and is, in addition, dead. (http://www.betanews.com/article/RIAA-Sues-Deceased-Grandmoth...)

Experts though they may be, sometimes what looks like a screw-up is actually a screw-up.
with respect to point #1, not having knowledge shouldn't preclude intelligent discourse with full disclosure of knowledge. intelligent discourse tends to lead towards knowledge acquisition.
If you substitute sheep for goats, you'd get tasty mutton as a "side" product...
please delete this posting.
How about using a reel mower? As a bonus, you would save gym on fees.
See Wolfram Alpha in Action: Our Screenshots
This is much better than the previously posted video, but you would think MIT could do a bit better video quality wouldn't you?
1) For online space, I really like FaceBooks platform... being able to specifically target is awesome. I actually have seen a higher response from FaceBook thn I have from using Google.

2) For traditional print you can always use: www.tapinko.com
Hey, we made tinyarro.ws, thanks for posting this!

If any of you are so inclined, please click one of the images on the front page of TA-- people have been asking the various Twitter apps to improve their international domain and unicode support, and so we collected those requests in a handy list.

Twitter itself works great, but the community of tools has been pretty rough with regards to supporting content in non-western languages.
>> "the only way to do long-running computation without blocking the UI was to implement your own cooperative multi-threading by "yielding" with setTimeout(fn, 0)."

Yeah I much prefer that method personally.
That's correct. If the goats are being raised anyway then there's no net addition from the creatures themselves.

But as I said, I suspect that the truck(s) that move the goats around emit more CO2 than a lawnmower would. I'm guessing that per-mile emissions from a mower are much higher than a car, but that the truck is moving a much greater distance.
Why ask a legal question to a bunch of non-lawyers? What good could come of that? There are only two possible responses:

1. You mistakenly come out thinking you were more informed than you were before you asked (dangerous).

2. You ignore it, in which case it's a bunch of wasted time.
Ask YC: Hands on learning options? (javascript, web frameworks)
Hi all. In my former life I did a lot of enterprisey programming, dealing with databases and fat clients (.net, sql server, oracle, com+). There are lots of opportunities in my current role to provide value via simple web apps to automate lots of activities, but this isn't a dev shop and I don't have the time for on the job self-training -- it's just not a successful learning style (for me).

Everything I know about programming I picked up while working closely with masters of their trade, and the learning curve was steep but got me proficient quickly. It's hard to identify courses that would get me on the right track but not cost an arm and a leg. What are your thoughts on programs that could fit this bill?

I was thinking that an online course over a few days along with more access to the trainer/expert could be an option, what do you all think?
Ah, but he's speculating. I actually spent $2,000. That's what it costs to provision a production box with Windows Server and SQL Server.
A hard time would have been to ignore Twitter completely.

Instead, they bombarded people with articles trumpeting the service, but showing the problems. The publicity was good, even though it was talking about downtime, it introduced people to twitter.
hey _pius: what's with the new account?
In general, everyone rates themselves as above average.

Known as the Lake Wobegon Effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon_effect

This study on the subject was especially good reading: http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

Most interestingly, the study points out that people who are truly way above average underrate themselves, illustrating the old adage that the more you know, the more you realize you don't know.
I was biking past there the day before yesterday and saw those goats. I wondered: what sort of a PR stunt is this? Now I know.
The Story of Berkshire's Charlie Munger
Does the law specify a timeline? Even if it did, would it be possible to prove that the CEO knowingly optimized for 3 year gains at the expense of 20 year ones?

An executive's options sink or swim with the company's share price. If a company's investors really want their executives to focus on the horizon, they should adjust compensation accordingly. Lengthen CEO tenure, and give stock/option grants with 10 year vesting periods.

People will always act in accordance with their own incentives. That's the fundamental principle behind the free market. The only way to get a CEO to focus on your long term success is to tie his long term success to it too.
I wonder how hackable these toys will be. If it is possible to get the raw data into a computer, I definitely want one.
How do you propose to get the lawn mowers and crew to/from Google HQ?
Something like this once happened at National Semiconductor. I remembered it wrong--turns out Widlar used sheep: http://www.national.com/rap/Story/widlar.html
The level for basical fluency is 800 characters. Research done has shown that by knowing these 800 characters (which have been specifically determined) will allow you to read 80% of all Chinese ever written.
Behave identically down to the exact pattern of neurons firing at the same times? Then sure, though thermal noise makes this impossible. But suppose they only behave "identically" in the sense that, say, the average firing frequency is the same across the whole net. Then there's no guarantee you're capturing the information-processing. This stuff that I've read tends to be heavily overhyped.
If you're interested in getting more students on board to take part of initial group to be tracked, feel free email me at melgirk at the only email service worth using.
I will second the fact that the UI is very confusing. The functions of the buttons as compared to the graphics did not make sense to me at all.
3. You have an idea of the ballpark you're playing in instead of being entirely clueless. You have somewhat of a clue to talk about the next time you see your lawyer.
I guess I just use the 2 Ps, but I am wondering: Do some debuggers let you run until error, then step backwards? That seems like it could be very valuable, to me.
Do (Re) main Afloat
It can be harmful to Google for medical information about a condition you have if it leads to improper self-medication. It has also helped people save or improve their lives because they knew the right questions to ask or areas to explore.
Thanks for the heads up . . . heck of a webinar.
I have never been a fan of debuggers, at least not for debugging application code. It's too tedious. One wrong keystroke (step over instead step into) and you throw all your work away. It is much easer to write a test script that exercises the bug, and then run that until the bug is fixed. (print is a great way to get information out of your program while debugging.) The added benefit is that this can become a regression test after you fix the bug, so the bug never comes back. I doubt a debugger can do that.

I will admit that sometimes I play with things in the REPL for a while instead of writing a script. This is somewhat like the debugger, but at a higher level (functions instead of lines), and more interactive. You can fix your faulty function, then hit M-p and try invoking it again until it works.
i can't tell how much of what you wrote is intended as hyperbole, but assuming you were straightforward in your intent, i believe you're overreaching. it isn't easy for outsiders to break into the mainstream media, but it happens.

recent examples of this would be nate silver and rachel maddow, but there are plenty more.
Notes on making JGit (Java Git) fast
I understand the TextMate mention since it's only available on OSX, but the web based / cross platform software listed has nothing to do with what operating system you're using.

"When software engineering teams work in multiple group chats, they use Campfire, a web-based group chat service for the Mac and iPhone. They can share documents using another third-party application, DropBox."
haha, I lost my password a while back and I used it as an opportunity to take some time off posting. Finally, I decided it was time to come back, so I e-mailed PG for a password reset, got one, and changed it to something more secure.

Then, in an amazing confluence of FAIL, managed to lose my password again. I didn't have the heart to ask PG for yet another manual password reset.

It did inspire me to finally buy a password manager, though. :)
There's also a follow-up post in the same thread with a few more comments: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/1180...
I found that quote interesting because I've always considered myself to feel exactly the opposite. Okay, I can create / run / manage every part of a website from the ground up, but people who really get Calculus make me feel retarded. What about scientists who create new chemical compounds and molecules and crazy stuff like that? Way over my head. Quantum Physicists? Forget it. Doctors? They have to fix bugs which involve an essentially innumerable number of variables!

I feel there are all sorts of industries and occupations that are far more difficult to learn and require far more intelligence than my skills in programming, design, and systems administration. Most I think I could probably learn and excel at, given a long enough timeline, but others I feel are likely beyond my grasp. I see no way I could ever become a Mathematician, for example.
http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/

For the hackers.
Seedcamp sounds sort of similar. They're based in UK, but are funding startups from all over Europe.

http://www.seedcamp.com/
The Power of Venture Myth (2005)
Why ask a legal question to a bunch of non-lawyers? What good could come of that? There are only two possible responses

Because chances are, some people here might have actually paid $200 an hour and talked to a lawyer about this subject. I can't afford that on a regular basis for one off questions.

I've read a number of posts asking for legal advice here, and a number of those posts contain the answer, "Here's my opinion, but you _really_ need a lawyer, dude."

Case in point, I actually really enjoyed your legalesque advice on sweepstakes vs gambling in different states a while back. http://searchyc.com/sweepstakes+gambling+mattmaroon

I'm sure with your background in the gambling world, you've had some exposure to those laws. I took what you said at face value and with a big pinch of salt. Should my site ever create a sweepstakes, I'll certainly be more cautious as a result of what you said, and I probably will pony up the Benjamins and talk to a lawyer about it.

You also have a good point in that anyone who makes legal decisions about things pertaining to their business because of what they read in an online forum has problems.
Another case where a computer manufacturer ended up designing their own CPUs was the UK company Acorn, developer of the BBC computers. A couple of existing in-house staff, one the author of BBC BASIC, sat down and came up with the first RISC design intended for home computers; the Acorn RISC Machine, now known as ARM.

After a while, Apple came on board and the technology was spun out of Acorn into the new Advance RISC Machines Ltd. with Apple as a shareholder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_processor#History
First-mover advantage is about network effects, not compound interest.
The most surprising part for me was: "But, JGit performs reasonably well; well enough that we use internally at Google as a git server."
So you offered to sell them the domain for $250 and they accepted your offer. I feel like you're not telling us the whole story, and "they're trying to stiff me" doesn't seem accurate at all.
I only skimmed "The Future of the Recording Industry", but it seems to be a case of exactly this.

"Though not mathematically proven (which would be virtually impossible) it logically seems as if DRM must actually cost artists and labels money on recorded music sales."

So recording industry execs could increase short-term revenue - which is what they care about - by changing their strategy. How does this sit with "they're not stupid, and they know the situation far better than you"?

And now you claim that the industry is doing what you advised/predicted. So it seems that intelligent people can analyse situations where they are not in possession of as many facts as other intelligent people, and still come out with a more correct answer. (Or at least, an answer that appears more correct given the industry's actions at the time. Possibly it already had the correct answer, and was just moving slowly.)

Maybe these intelligent people will be wrong more often than not, but looking at incentives: if you're right, you look like a prophet or at least get to feel self-satisfied. If you're wrong, everyone forgets; you lose nothing except the time spent thinking and writing, which was probably fun and educational anyway. You probably don't even need a reward for being right to make this worthwhile.
We need a cheap eeg usb device with an online game store of mind games. Maybe come out with an eeg for the wii and let wiiware titles use it.
Don't argue the example. I chose the example as an obviously wrong opinion.

I know lots of people who are hated simply because they try to hard to be liked. Annoyingly friendly to the point of aggravation. They wind up being hated because they don't want to be hated.

And of course if I say something like "Nerds will deny their love of the music stylings of Britney Spears", I will get a ton of "nerds" who don't like Britney Spears at all and say so. But that isn't proof that they secretly like Britney Spears because you correctly predicted the response to an inflammatory statement.

A lot of people are coming up to say that they weren't assholes, that when they were nice they were still victimized, etc., etc.
But to you that is only proof of your statement that they are in denial. You are refusing to consider that maybe, you are just wrong, extrapolating from yourself conclusions that don't hold in the larger context.
Older people also read books more. And read more books. This is the reader market, not the blog market.
I actually found with several of the characters that the stroke order it dictated was not correct. Meaning that if I tried to write it in the correct order, it wouldn't keep my strokes, because it had a different order in mind.
Also, a nice feature for older people is that the text can be made large for easier reading.
wow, quite the story!
This post explains some of my (Vespignani's) group results that I alluded to before http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=586028
The problem with mattmaroon citing this message as an example of... whatever it is he's accusing me of... is that I actually have studied this topic, from primary sources, and been learning about it for years now. Perhaps he doesn't know enough about the topic to recognize that.

He misinterprets my first line as claiming this is setting a precedent. No, I'm talking about how they would want this to turn into something that sets this up as a precedent, because simply a random fight is pointless expense.

Secondly... unless you can bring a lawyer in to disprove my points, I, like I said, have actually been studying this stuff for a while and am reasonably confident on this point. This is, Constitutionally, a bad case for Warner, and precisely because I don't think they are stupid, give them the benefit of the doubt and assume this was an at-least semi-automated process gone wrong. That certainly happens often enough, after all.

Other explanations exist; simple intimidation, some "larger" plan, the belief they can ram it through with enough money, an order from a non-lawyer on top going against lawyerly advice.

Frankly, assuming that companies always act rationally, even given the information available from their point of view, is naive and not supported by the facts, a point I've seen from the inside of plenty of tech and non-tech companies. Going off on people for failing to assume this is not justified.