skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I oftentimes find myself wondering what might be the equivalent of this sort of electronics hackery in the world of software.

It's not uncommon for me to see engineer friends of mine working on these sorts of projects and to find myself envying the apparent complexity of such projects - nothing (kernel hacks, ATMEGA projects, large C++ (shudder) systems, crypto/security work, ...) feels as though it requires the same level of knowledge/expertise as working on even relatively simple engineer's projects like this.

Might this just be a standard insider's view of one's own field?

To put it in context, Alec (M0TEI) is a student of engineering at Cambridge and a friend.
There should be some word for externalities caused by the difference between perceived and actual risk. The only word that comes to mind is: shitstorm.
I've mentioned this in other threads but my gripe is that they got rid of the pgup/pgdown/home/end/etc. column. I have no idea why, and it even looks like there's plenty of space on the laptop for it. I use those keys all day, every day, and the sad trend of laptops aping Apple's keyboard layout saddens me greatly.
You can update yourself tomorrow if you live far away. You can update yourself tomorrow if your wife wasn't a few blocks away a couple hours before the bombing happened, and if she didn't leave downtown on foot and unknowingly walk right by the bombers' apartment. You can update yourself tomorrow if the cop who got killed doesn't live three blocks away. You can update yourself tomorrow if the carjacking didn't happen right in front of your office. You can update yourself tomorrow if you're not wondering if someone you know is about to be killed by the bomber. You can update yourself tomorrow if no one has told you to stay inside and has shut down the public transit system. All of which were true for me this week.

Otherwise, yes, go about your business. There's no way you can react like this to every tragedy everywhere and retain your sanity.

[Also, I was watching local Boston TV, periodically listening to the Boston NPR radio station, and following Twitter (where some people were relaying what was being said on the police radios); all of those can be done online. For the last hour about all that came out was that the guy was in a boat, there were some noises that were maybe gunshots, but not clear who was firing, maybe the cops were using stun grenades, and finally they announced he had been captured. But mostly that was just waiting, because they deliberately weren't giving out information right then, so I'm not surprised you didn't know what was going on, no matter what your news source. By the way, as someone non-local who were "all of the people you're supposed to" follow?]
I agree - GitHub being the great repository it is for Open Source projects, it really wouldn't be a bad idea to have some sort of reminder to users when creating a repo to add a file detailing the license the code is being released under.
>> I've struggled before with using Linux as my full-time operating environment both at work and at home.

More or less than Windows? http://superuser.com/questions/142873/windows-7-not-recogniz...

>> It's an impressive achievement, and it's also a sad comment...

Huh?

>> Linux is not yet "ready for the desktop," and I'm doubtful it will ever be—at least not in the sense that an average person could use it full-time without any assistance.
>> but there's no way I'd feel comfy installing even newbie-friendly Ubuntu or Mint on my parents' computers.

My wife is as non-techie as you can get, we bought an Dell Laptop which came with Ubuntu for her sometime back, she has no trouble, logging in, browsing, using Open Office for simple documents and spreadsheets, Skype, Google Voice, email. Hmm, when I read stuff indicating that modern Linux especially Ubuntu is hard for ordinary users it honestly makes me question the true motivation of the author when the author is a blogger who pretends to have a clue.
Texas Explosion Seen as Sign of Weak U.S. Oversight
As I understand it, even though they haven't Mirandized him, all that means is if he confesses that confession still won't be admissible. They probably didn't Mirandize him because they don't care 1 bit about getting confession, they want to be sure if there's anyone else out there that is planning attacks they get that info from him. Getting info about whether he's guilty doesn't matter, because he's super fucking guilty.
Is the author is worried about security, he should check consider uninstalling his browsers as well.
>exclusionary

Online communities with a significant number of very young people tend not to be the healthiest ones.
Well, a lot of people are doing it wrong then.
Who said we don't use word order?

Who said we don't use similar search to infer intent?

We can't really use the click throughs until we have users. We need feed back to improve results. But this also powers the related search in our TLDR Products ( http://www.tldrstuff.com ) and those have to work with much more abstract queries, because they aren't user queries they are generated queries.
Building doesn't require anything too extreme. A fresh checkout of llvm + clang builds on my two year old macbook air in ~15 min.
I am also a physicist doing AI. The comment was not aimed at you! I did not mean modern physics (QM,Relativity etc)! That is rock solid!

What I meant was physics which is closer to the Time Cube theory than rock solid mathematics on a spectrum of math and science.

"As I've already indicated, there's reason to be skeptical when physicists stretch past the usual boundaries of the discipline."

There is reason to be skeptical when anybody proposes a grand unifying theory for something as grand and difficult as intelligence!! Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!

This has been going since 1957 with so many young lives lost (sometimes literally) due to techniques bordering on charlatanism. Sorry to be harsh, I love AI and want it to succeed. It won't succeed if people mix pursuing knowledge with pursuing fame and $.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-02/ff_aimyst...
Until a year or two ago, yes. I've been using Ubuntu on only two different laptops since 8.04 and the staggering amount of fundamental problems and regressions that occurred and continue to occur is shocking. It's gotten a whole lot better in the past year or so but before then it was Russian roulette to install a new version of Ubuntu on the same laptop hardware.

Today the bugs/regressions usually aren't of the "sound on longer works" type or "my video card worked fine in 9.04 but was mysteriously blacklisted in 9.10" type, but of the UX type. I think a lot of that is due to Gnome 3 and the CADT development model they have, and to Canonical and their clownish Unity engineering history.
If the question had been "Who is Justin Bieber?", I would have been a very happy man.
I'm not a regular reddit user, but the thread(s) on the manhunt were more accurate than, and often scooped, the CNN talking heads I had on in the background.
Look, I'm not one of those people who goes around pointing out logical fallacies everywhere. Frankly, I think those people are obnoxious. But you've described a pretty obvious false dichotomy. A lot of things could have happened without the lockdown, including attacks on public transit, attacks on crowded public areas, and a better chance of him fleeing town on foot or in a car without being noticed. It's not as simple as your two scenarios.
If I understood it correctly, it is part of the military HAVE QUICK frequency hopping system [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAVE_QUICK
Agreed. Seems to be purposefully left out to support his position.

The snipers death toll was, what, 7% of the total number of injuries at Boston? Once you factor in why bombs are terrible the comparison falls apart a bit in my opinion.
The blackhawk helicopters flying over Boston were a clear breach of Posse Comitatus

You realize that the MA National Guard has blackhawks, right?
Yeah, this is all convex, creative/research work with a small chance of a huge payoff in terms of value creation. Companies focused on quarterly earnings won't invest in this sort of R&D type work anymore, so the government has to.
You're also teaching your management chain to provide the minimum reward, fire frequently, and generally be unpleasant to force you to work more. And you turn your daily life into a struggle, as you and the management feel out and try to budge the line.
It's kind of a mashup article, combining thoughts from other sources, check out the links.
When you are building a technology, you have to isolate and test. We use indicators that are harder to game than inbound links like traffic. But it is a balancing act. We have just shy of 100 score factors we can tweak, and getting them right takes a bit of time.
Saying "NP-complete problems remain so in the quantum world" is a bit imprecise because NP-complete is simply defined as a set of problems which can be solved by classical nondeterministic computers. Of course it "remains so" in the quantum world; it's a mathematical definition, it remains so in any world.

What's very interesting is that Scott Aaronson proved that normal quantum computers could have solved NP problems (in fact, something stronger: BQP = PP) if quantum mechanics allowed nonunitary linear operations or was based on the norm

norm = lambda vec: sum(abs(component) ** p for component in vec)

for p > 2 (quantum mechanics is based on p = 2, classical probability is based on p = 1). So if it were any larger, the quantum computer could do brute force with ease.

Right now it's not known whether BQP contains NP-complete or not; it might very well contain both problems in NP and problems not in NP while deftly evading NP-complete.

It is known that PostBQP = PP and therefore contains NP-complete. PostBQP is the set of quantum algorithms which are allowed to destroy the universe when they fail, under the anthropic principle reasoning that "humans will only live on in universes where the computation succeeds."
To be fair, I'm a pretty new blogger, so maybe my cluefulness is still developing. That being said, what do you think my motivation is?
For any crime, there's a risk-reward balance. On the risk side, many rampage killers are suicidal and don't seem to fear the consequences of law enforcement. We need to focus on taking away the reward for these crimes i.e. public attention.
Maybe we need two channels, one that loops(ish) with the latest situation, and another that's just a feed of updates?
For most retail stores, that would actually be very efficient.
Now you made me look it up. It's called Synapse 2 and when I bought (and subsequently returned) a Razer Naga Hex in September last year it was the only way to configure the mouse. Specifically, you needed it to configure the keyboard emulation keys for the thumb buttons. It did require a registration and login. The excuse for this was some "store your settings in The Cloud" bollocks which I had absolutely no use for - I just wanted to configure my fancy mouse.

You can find it at http://www.razerzone.com/synapse2 and the tech specs there state that "Valid e-mail, software download, license acceptance, and internet connection needed to activate full features and for software updates." For a bloody mouse driver.
The TV show "Homeland", right? Not another book?
As soon as it required a FB login, I closed the browser.

Stop forcing social logins, especially ones tied to networks where there's a high degree of likelihood you'll post random shit "as me" that I most likely don't want to be posted.

This diagram might explain our reaction a bit better: http://i.imgur.com/oXtWdH2.png
This is exactly the same conclusion I came to at the end of the day yesterday.

I realized I probably "wasted" three hours following the story. Because at the end of the day, I gained nothing I couldn't have gotten in reading an article at 11pm for five minutes.

I swear, it's like a drug. It's exciting at the time, but afterwards you think, well, that was a stupid waste of my time.
The Miranda rights apply to multiple constitutional amendments (4th and 5th, others indirectly) from the Bill of Rights, and it is also the constitution that states the Supreme Court decision for which they are named is law, and the only binding interpretation for how those amendments are to be applied.

In short, the Supreme Court ruled that not informing suspects of these rights violated the amendments, and the Constitution itself says they have the right to do that.
(Now with better audio)
>> Linux just doesn't seem to do laptops very well.

Actually it has done very well on several of mine from different manufacturers since 2000, odd huh?
It's not so much that "breaking news is broken" as that breaking news has certain specific failure modes.

When "breaking news" is covering an ongoing disaster or police action, where the information they're getting is potentially second- or third-hand, and where the primary sources might not fully understand what they themselves witnessed, there's a lot of opportunity to go wrong. Crimes and disasters may play out very differently from expectations, and may therefore require careful after-the-fact analysis of every available shred of information, before they're actually understood.

On the other hand, certain events can be fully and clearly understood right as they happen. Consider "new Pope selected", "tornado spotted 3 miles west of Townsville", or "School track team takes second at Rival Invitational; Person wins 4 individual events". Official announcements, or events happening according to an understood pattern, generally come through the "breaking news" cycle without problems.
I am glad someone is finally taking on the ridiculousness of San Francisco politics. I was born here, and I've watched things just get more and more ridiculous. There's a reason this city was voted one of the worst run in the US, just watch a board of supervisors meeting and you'll get a good sense of whats wrong.

I think Ron is in the wrong about a few things (1A vs 2A), but frankly Ron is and will be a boon to San Francisco politics and the economy.
I would add the fun fact that the applied physics work that Crick was doing was experimental work in fluid mechanics when a bomb fell through the roof of his laboratory and destroyed his experiment! This was certainly a factor in prompting his to switch fields.

I would also add Max Delbruck to your list of turn of the last century physicists cum molecular biologists and the physicist members of the RNA tie club: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_Tie_Club.

I also have a question for the GP. What exactly makes a physicist so? I have "merely" a masters degree in physics, and although I consider myself to be a theoretical biologist, I am often called a physicist by my collaborators (some of whom are physicists themselves). What about a degree actually matters in this descriptive title?
PS Sometimes I wish there were a news service that would identify news headlines by their degree of importance.

Rank 1 headlines would be SMS-ed to me immediately. Rank 2 would be e-mailed immediately. Rank 3 would be collated by e-mail daily. I could choose specific categories of interest (technology, US politics) to add to the daily e-mail of lower ranks (4, 5, etc.)

That way, I'd always know I wasn't missing anything important, but not wasting my time either. Happily, there would be whole days where nothing of importance happened, and I'd have nothing to read!
Cool, just watched the video, looks really ambitious! Yeah I'd like to hear more and share what I can. Let's setup a call or something. lucasdailey@gmail.com
And Mendel was a monk.
Being rational will not help drive blog views.
Startup idea: inward bicycle transportation service
The problem isn't that there are unconfirmed reports floating around, that has always been the case and always will be. The problem is that the major news bodies are reporting unsubstantiated rumors as truth without having the time to investigate.

Basically news is a race, and since the major reporting institutions used to be the only ones racing they would always win, so they would make sure they would do it right. Now they're racing with Twitter, yet trying to have the same authority as they used to. It's a race you can't win.

Just listen to the news for a few minutes and you'll hear "Many sources are saying that..." That really means "We're watching Twitter, and..." but they're not willing to admit that they don't really know for sure.
That's wonderful! I'd love to talk with you more about the process you guys went through validating your tech. I'd love if you send me an email and we could find a time to talk more about it.
This comment really bugs me and I'm not sure why. Somehow I keep hearing in my head "I don't like labeling these gunshot wounds as 'injuries', what's really wrong is the environment full of random gunfire". It's the individual who is suffering, and that's important. Is illness supposed to be a cause, and not a result?
Are you thinking of Physijs [0], which is made to work well with ThreeJS? Its a wrapper around Ammojs for ThreeJS.

It does look good and integrates well, but to be honest ThreeJS is so mature and battle tested with multiple renderers (canvas, webgl etc) that when building a physics engine, I really think it would be better to spend ones dev time on the physics and not waste* time reimplementing a portion of ThreeJS.

[0]: http://chandlerprall.github.io/Physijs/

*Obviously not actually 'wasted' time, hacking is great even just for the sake of it - but I'm sure you know what I mean.
> It may be hard to swallow but the extra effort and hours that you put into your job as a software developer does not usually amount to someone higher up thinking you should run the company. It has been my experience that good producers are more likely to be asked to continue to produce. If they moved you to a higher position and better pay then who would produce the software?

This is why it's important to have a way to move "up" (greater reward, prestige and technical authority) that doesn't involve becoming management.
This actually happens fairly regularly after armed robberies and gang activity, although the affected area tends to only be a few blocks. But if I am aware of a real danger posed by the armed subject (for example, the suspect has killed an innocent homeowner rather than thug-on-thug crime) and the restrictions are voluntary and temporary, then yes, I'm will in help out.
My old Macbook unibody from 2008 had this issue with the power supply. My wive has a 2010 Macbook Pro and its power supply died just like mine did.

Something I really like with this Asus laptop is a thing called strain relief in the power cord.
As if the HN homepage is an instant badge of honor.

It has seen it's share of lame stories over the years.

That said, it doesn't matter if the post has any content. It's enough that it invokes an interesting topic for HN readers to discuss about. Same as "ASK HN" posts have no content at all, just the title, as a basis for discussion.
If your definition of complete and total failure is "no casualties to civilians or law enforcement" after the suggestion was made to citizens, then you are correct. Also, your statement about us not being traditionally defined citizens seems to have something to do with low gun ownership in the region? I would like to refer you to this: http://www.vpc.org/press/1204death.htm
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand I do think there are many concerning aspects to shutting down a city for law enforcement purposes, even if much of that happens more or less voluntarily. On the other hand this was a rather unusual situation where the suspects were at large, well armed, known to be in a specific area, and their names and faces were known. I can't think of many other equally comparable situations.

What I do know for certain though is that there's far too much emotion in this discussion right now. This is an important topic that deserves thoughtful, relaxed discussion, but I don't think that's happening or even possible at the moment.
Tried running this on a Toshiba T1100 Plus [1], never did get it working...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_T1100
SVG is usually much slower due to it's DOM representation, not a good fit for heavy animations.
I've been thinking about doing that, actually, so not knowing of any easy way was a bit of a fib. Very tempting, to say the least, but free software and all.
Why not create implicit temporary accounts (tied to some token in a cookie) that will automatically be make permanent when the user registers with email or Facebook? People can play the game and not lose their game history when they register.
Is Boston normally an incredibly quiet city? Incredulous at reports of the lockdown I looked at Boston highway cameras and it was close to a ghosttown. Helicopter video feeds of the Boston downtown showed, again, a ghosttown. Various post-apocalyptic pictures have emerged of Boston proper with hardly a soul in site.

I have never been to Boston (though will soon en route to a Patriots game), however I find it hard to believe it is normally that quiet.
The thing that's a bit different about this is that most of these customers are NOT price-conscious vultures, they are enthusiasts. Otherwise, they would have said "Razer? Who the hell is that?" These products are not well known outside hardcore PC gamers. PC gamers are willing to drop a TON of cash on their hobby or else they wouldn't be hardcore PC gamers.

The longtime Razer fans to some degree seem to be canceling their orders. At least with the ones you'll be shipping still I'd think the majority of those are strong PC gaming enthusiasts who have friends who are as well. Their stuff is quite shiny and attractive in general.
BMR rents/sales here are ridiculous. I've read some of the requirements for the sales and I don't see how these units ever get sold legitimately. BMR rents are also a similarly byzantine process.

As it is now SF (like the state itself) is business unfriendly and I hope that changes. My favorite example is SF's property tax depreciation schedule and the 12 year cycle for servers. I can't think of a server that is even designed to function that long anymore, the standard is 3 years. This is how out of touch San Francisco is, and it needs to change.
I've head a similar game idea brewing for a long time: massively-multiplayer Battleship! Think Words with Friends meets Eve Online. :)
Which distribution? What laptop manufacturers? What years?
Although one point or another in the post is disagreeable, there is something perverse is such a "shutdown" reaction. The reality is that all situations create precedent, which mean that a party with interest in shutting a city down only needs a single hand made bomb to create such distraction.
The reasons cited in the article are exactly why I release software under wtfpl using a moniker.

Any of my code that I deem worthy of ridicule by the software community should be as easy to use and modify as possible. The only way that I've found for the purist in me to be satisfied is to allow complete freedom in the usage of code that I produce.
This isn't correct.

The public safety exemption to Miranda rights DOES allow the results of questioning to be used as evidence. That is what is happening here.

This exception stems from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Quarles
Don't Have Time To Read This Article? There's An App For That
Specifically, the Live Update threads on reddit.com/r/news were amazingly detailed. I'm not normally a reddit user, but the minute-by-minute details went way beyond what I found elsewhere. (Although you end up with a lot of unfiltered stuff - anyone know what's up with the 70-year old man with the trigger switch that was being discussed there?)

On the other hand, Fox made me gnash my teeth when a reporter on the street in Boston presented "breaking news" that there would be a press conference in a few hours, which is hardly news let alone breaking news.