skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The article is kind of written in gibberish. It also implies that the idea of linking thermodynamics to intelligence is novel when a lot of experts actually see it as a fundamental of thermodynamics and the universe. It's even possible that this physicist is naive about the whole debate an thinks that he discovered this.

However while the idea is not new, it does seem like he made a software implementation of some some aspects of it and this could be interesting.

I find the link between thermodynamics and intelligence very interesting. Here is how it works according to me. First the best definition of intelligence IMO is the ability to predict the unknown (whether because it's hidden or because it's in the future) from current knowledge.

In order to have 'intelligence' you have to have some information in your head. That is to say, a part of you has to be physically correlated with a part of the world, some particles in your head have to have patterns that approximately and functionally 'mirror' part of the world.

Thermodynamics is about order and this is also about particles having properties that correlate with each other. This means that in a low entropy situation knowing something about a particle tells you something about some other particles. Intelligence would by useless if the universe had too high entropy. You can't get much insight from white noise even if you are very smart.

There is a saying that "knowledge is power". This is truer than you might think. It is true in a very physical sense.

For example, take the thermodynamic textbook example of a container with a gas on one side and void on the other. If there is no barrier between the two side the gas should move to fill the void and settle in the higher entropy case of evenly filling the space. Thermodynamics says that you would need to spend energy to push the gas back to one side.

However, if you were to put a wall in the middle of the container with a little door large enough to let a molecule go through, and you knew exactly the position and velocity of each molecule in the container, you could open and close the door at exactly the right time when a molecule is about to go from, say, left to right through the door and close it when one is about to go right to left. Using very little energy you could get all molecules to end up on one side of the container.

This should violate the second law of thermodynamics but it does not! Why is that you ask? It's because the knowledge you have of the position and velocity of all these molecules is a source of low entropy. Knowledge is low entropy and the correlation between the particles in your head and the real world is what allows you to make predictions and extract useful energy from things.

Note that an interesting comp sci result of this is that low entropy information is more easy to compress and the more a system is good at predicting data from other data, the better it is at compressing such that there is also a tight link between the concepts of compression algorithms and artificial intelligence. But that's another story.
Goodbye Sherpa, Hello Osito Predictive Intelligence iOS App
And both are firmly within crackpot territory.

> This may be why astronomers often find it difficult to explain gravitational movement’s of distant celestial bodies and have to introduce the concept of “dark matter” to help balance the equations.

This is not really accurate. While it could well be that our understanding of gravity is not complete at very large scales, it's unlikely at this that dark matter and dark energy are artifacts of our models.

>“We’ve known for a long time gravity doesn’t exist,” Dr. Verlinde said, “It’s time to yell it.”

At this point there is no compelling evidence in favor of that theory. This would also mean that General Relativity is wrong, which is unlikely given the mountain of observational data in favor of it.
Mozilla takes hard stance on protecting Web site certificates
When I was working on developing algo for shape recognition for my iPad app (Lekh Diagram), I thought in terms of entropy too. But my understanding is just opposite. In my understanding, intelligent system mostly tries to minimize the entropy. intelligent system tries to find out pattern, perform task with some pattern which ,IMO, minimizes the disorder.
> They are free in a purely anarchist sense. This is not a good thing™.

?
Please use regular capitalization as this makes your post more likely to get flagged. Read the HN guidelines.

Martin
Bush still living rent free in your head eh? Your post might be taken more seriously by those who know and follow politics if you acknowledged that Obama didn't just carry on with many of Bush's policies, but enacted new laws that make Bush's interpretations pale in comparison.
I'm calling for a BTC donation to help lushan earthquake refugees ...
Managing Decoupling Part 3: C++ Duck Typing
What stcredzero says is logically right: it restricts the freedom for contributing and licensing your own work in the next hop.

I am not saying that GPL is bad, I am arguing that in complex scenarios this is not the right choice.
> You don't uninstall grep

Beautiful. Thank you. I am stealing that for when I discuss this in other places.
Not sure if using trademark symbol for emphasis or trying to make a point about trademarks in an anarchist society... :)

In any case, the public domain is free in an anarchist sense; BSD and MIT certainly are not.
I would have loved to have been able to pay for a download to those DVDs she is selling.
The Boston Bombers and the Decline of Al-Qaeda
Yes, you would get some nominal damages, plus any actual loss you could prove (IE the money of the people who spent time processing your DMCA request, plus how much you would have earned from ads on the post) or, and if they did it repeatedly, you may get something more (Punitive damages are rare in contract law, but possible).

Look, as much as I don't like it, this is a tradeoff.
On one side, you have the fact that websites like this would normally be liable for everything they publish.
DMCA says "we'll fix that for you", the cost being "if you want safe harbor, and someone with a good faith belief sends a takedown notice, you honor it".

If StackExchange really believed the material was non-infringing, they could always ignore the DMCA takedown, and force CipherCloud to sue them.
They didn't choose to take that risk.
Newspapers have the same issue, FWIW: They get threatened all the time by bad actors (and not just for defamation of public figures, which the are mostly protected from). They just often choose to take the risk and force bad actors to sue them.

It's not at all clear what you think the solution is. If you institute harsh penalties for filing "bad" DMCA requests, all that would happen would be large numbers of lawsuits over DMCA requests, bad or good, because it would likely be profitable. You really think torrentfreak/isohunt/et al wouldn't just start filing suits over every single DMCA request they receive? What do they have to lose? They wouldn't have to win many suits to make money off it.

If you have a good solution, i'd love to hear it :)

I realize how odd this sounds, and i really do hate the way content companies/et al abuse the DMCA process, but one doesn't need to look very hard at history to see what lawyers in general will do if you make it profitable (see the history of rule 11 sanctions, particularly, the period from 1983 to 1993, or you know, recent prop 65 litigation, resulting in everything in the world having "the state of California believes this may cause cancer" labels on it ).
So gravity doesn't exist or gravity is more complex than we thought? Can someone explain it? Thanks.
When someone proposes something wrong in a field where they are validly an expert, they are simply wrong, not a crackpot. The man has 70 peer reviewed publications in theoretical physics:

http://staff.science.uva.nl/~erikv/page1/page1.html
I launched Sideshow a month ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5372680 and received tons of valuable feedback (Thank you!).

I've implemented most of the feedback, mainly: creator's interview, url screenshot and a new layout[1].

Would really love to know what you guys think of this.

[1] How it looked like in v1: http://i.imgur.com/vhHNcSD.png

p.s: I've kept its development journal on ADN: https://alpha.app.net/sideshow
Submission from a lousy, link-baiting source with no informative details. This doesn't really belong on Hacker News, as this is not news, nor does it "gratify curiosity."
State or intent? The missing discussion of NoSQL
UVA Online judge - a worthy cause
7 years is a very short time in the world of banks.

I personally would prefer to never have to change banks again in my life - and since my banking has been near entirely online since the late '90s that has seemed reasonable for almost 2 decades.

In fact Citibank closed down my account type/product, and required I go through the whole rigmarole to set up a new account (vs just converting my account). Wells Fargo, started requiring fingerprints to do any action with my account. (Bad neighborhood - but depositing a check shouldn't require a fingerprint. ) And BofA did the above when I was flying between Seattle and Santa Fe every 3 weeks.

After BofA I switched to a local bank in Los Alamos (a town I've not been to in 5 years at this point) and it's working out splendidly.
When I find BSD or MIT licensed code, I feel like a kid whose grandmother has given him money for his birthday, so he can spend it on what he wants.

When I find GPL licensed code, I feel like a kid whose grandmother has given him underpants for his birthday.
Whether the guy is an authority or not, it's still exceedingly unlikely this hypothesis is correct. And yes, papers "proving Einstein wrong" are usually crackpot material. What that guy published in the past is not the subject here.
I remember when Apple mispriced their 1TB hard drives at $30 instead of $300 [1]. All orders were cancelled.

I'm a huge fan of Razer. I own many of their products and would recommend them all, especially the DeathAdder mouse. Seriously, it's quite possibly the best mouse you will ever use.

I didn't get anything ordered with a 90% reduction, but I think I'll be ordered an Orbweaver later today. They deserve it.

1: http://www.digital-forums.com/showthread.php/307773-Misprice...

edit: Spelling, and added the only source I could find.
GIMP gets a bad rep, but really it's pretty good if you get over the fact that it doesn't do everything like photoshop. That being said, I am aware that Photoshop has several advanced features that are simply not present in GIMP right now... and I'm still waiting for GIMP 2.8 to be the default install so everyone can stop complaining about the floating windows.
Put succinitly, it is idea is that gravity is not a fundamental force, but emerging property of a more fundamental force and if I'm not mistaken its entropy.
I like what you guys are doing and thank you for featuring https://starthq.com - we got 37 visitors as a result directly from your site & probably more from the email.

You should make the buttons to go back and forth between days a bit more prominent though, it took me a few minutes to figure out they were there.
Anarchy = "freedom" to kill someone, etc

Democracy = freedom to do what you want, as long as you don't infringe on other people's rights/freedoms.

So I think he wants to say GPL is more like democracy from this point of view, while MIT is more like anarchy, where everyone can do whatever they want with it (both good and bad).
Guest posting guide: get quality traffic to your website in no time
Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Linux Ultrabook review
I don't know if the situation is really that complex. The GPL and it's code base exist to push the world towards the correct state of being.

That feeling of wanting to use a GPL library, but not being able to open source your code feels awful, I know, but that feeling is there to get you to ask "Why cant I open source my code?" not "Why is the GPL restricting me?"
The Music of 'Flow'
Depending on your demographic of players this may be a mistake.

How could having the option of registering sans Facebook be a mistake? In what way could broadening your target audience be a poor choice?

Hinging your cart entirely like that (becoming a sharecropper that is completely dependent on the goodwill and cooperation of a much bigger partner) is seldom a responsible business strategy.
I'm getting the feeling the defense is going to have a hell of a time finding an impartial jury.
Facebook Plans Huge Server Farm in Iowa
I don't see Twitter being a good place to market your app. Google+ would be fantastic because it's been adopted by your target market.

Your app is a little different than most because your price isn't in the basement. That means you can afford to spend a little bit to acquire a customers. The 99 cent app can't afford to spend much at all to acquire a customer.
MIT and BSD are great for takers who like to take from open source and give nothing back since they are free to take the code, modify it, and release it as commercial closed source software (which is usually what happens). There are rare exceptions to this where people enhance and contribute back. Companies love MIT/BSD since they don't have to give back to their competitors.

The GPL is great as it ensures that everyone who uses my code has to give their contributions back so I get to use and improve upon it, too. Individuals usually like this. Companies often do not.

The way I look at it, I'm doing work for free. The GPL ensures I get a return on that investment in the form of additional code and work that I can use in my own projects and that everyone can benefit from. MIT/BSD lets someone else profit from my work without giving anything back to anyone.
For me, the thing which killed the GPL was the GPL v3.

Not the contraversy which surrounded it, but the fact that GPL v2 is incompatable with GPL v3, and the suggested fix was "make your licence GPL v2+ and trust us for all time to never make a licence you disagree with". I am aware of several projects which will probably never get off GPL v2, and now can't merge in GPL v3-only code (as while the FSF seem to encourage people to make the code forward-licence compatible, they don't seem to encourage backward-licence compatability).

For me (and several minor projects I work on), that was the point at which we just threw our hands in the air -- we didn't have the time or motivation to pick our way out of this situation.
He's saying that gravity is an emergent property, just like temperature or the marble in a stack of envelopes.
Fernando Alonso's Ferrari F1 simulator
Very nice work, thanks for sharing
Epoch Times is known as the paper associated with the Falun Gong movement, casting doubt on its integrity and credibility.
I don't expect anyone here arguing for the GPL (in an predominately neoconservative community like hacker news). So anyways, I make the conscious decision to use GPL, because it protects my work from exploitation by others (corporations are people too my friend, right?)
There's a Pong tournament on a Philly skyscraper tonight
On OS X, yes, but not on Windows.
This is exactly my feeling! A lot of my "playground stuff" is in the Public Domain for this very reason; I hate giving underpants as gifts cause that is such a bummer (and you don't even find out a lot of times until you download the bloody thing), I can't even explain just how bad it feels without coffee first.

The non-playground stuff is MIT (something I did for work) or ISC, which is mostly harmless to anyone who wants to actually use it. People who use GPL are too hung up on controlling the distribution mode of derivatives; I understand the reason GPL exists, but I think it's a faulty premise to begin with.

Kinda like Peace Through Superior Fire Power.

Also, the preamble to the GPL reads a lot like religious/political rhetoric.
I must say this is a tasteless comment:

Gravity must exist...my crap falls in the toilet every time! Amazing!
That is true but I was only comparing in terms of not seeing one's family again. It's hard to imagine saying good bye to your friends and family and knowing you won't likely ever see them again.

Most Irish left for America during the potato famine so didn't really have much choice in the matter - it was emigrate or starve.
You know, if I make something open-source, it's because I want people to use it. I refuse to use copyleft licenses because all they manage to do in practice is ensure no commercial venture will ever use your code. If I didn't want a commercial entity using my code, I wouldn't make it open-source.

The GPL was created to help free software, which is more about freedom of speech, not open-source. It should be used only when your code is intended as a contribution to the free software movement, not when it is intended to simply be open-source.
Yeah, I'll definitely do that sometime!

Currently I just want to get the client as polished as possible.

Once that's done and the XMPP server is up, I'll make a post to ShowHN.
Indeed. Part of this for me is vanity in a sense, I'd love it if Microsoft used my code. (Although they never will, but hey, I can dream.) But also, I like permissive licenses because it means I worry less and anyone who uses my code can worry less about it.
I'm sure you can find stronger evidence than "associated with Falun Gong movement." Outside of the PRC, they are considered just another belief system and hardly considered a cult.
Try demo/demo
Since there aren't any screenshots I don't think I will use this till you fix the landing page. Does anyone have any alternatives that are 'bloat-free' Readers?
All of the observational data in favor of general relativity is also in favor of Verlinde's entropic gravity, since the former can be derived from the latter.
See also this (much better) interview with the same guy: http://bigthink.com/videos/gravity-doesnt-exist
You are missing "Blogging"
I've always found it a far more compelling argument that gravity is a side effect of time dilation due to the greater informational and interactive density brought about by matter.
I've released all of my open-source code -- with the exception of one project (LGPL, because it was a direct port of another LGPL'd library) -- under permissive licenses like Apache 2.0 or modified BSD.

What I really dislike about that feeling you describe is when I think of a good project I'd like to build, but which would require the use of a GPL'd library -- therefore requiring me to license my code under the GPL. Every time that's come up, I've just opted not to create the project; in my mind, I just can't justify writing open-source code that's "free" instead of free.
"Be careful"?! I have to say, that sounds rather menacing!

I think the argument is specifically about how the positions they hold are inconsistent. This says nothing about the positions themselves. Doesn't even imply it, to my eyes!
A lot of hand waving. Not so many concrete results.
How To Make Your Open Source Project Really Awesome
I hear app ideas all the time. I think at least a third of the time I can pull out my phone and find an app that does that already. If they haven't even looked at competitors, they're not serious. I've learned that one quick way to filter people is to ask to see what apps are on their phone. If it's just Facebook and Angry Birds, they're useless.

Out of all the app pitches I've heard, I'd say 33% are already done reasonably well by other apps. Maybe 25% or more are not possible to do on the iPhone (but sometimes on Android). At least 90% have a marketing plan of "just put it in the store and wait for the sales to explode."
Useful to note that parent's Ref. 0 has been peer-reviewed and is published in JHEP, a respectable high energy physics journal.

Sadly, articles like those linked often do not check the authors' credentials or whether the research being summarised has been successfully published somewhere rather than just put on the arXiv.

The BBC (and possibly others) go further, asking rival or independent researchers to comment on new work; this approach (check for peer review and also seeking critical comment from third parties) should be the expected standard in scientific news reporting for a lay audience.

DOI link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/JHEP04(2011)029
I use both Gimp and Photoshop. I don't agree that the learning curve of Gimp is shallower than Photoshop. I also disagree that mastering Gimp will save money in the long term.

-- The tools that are available in Gimp are basically broken, especially the fuzzy-select tool. In Photoshop, you usually click and go on, in Gimp, you always have a halo and then you have to dive into pixel deletion. I don't care how good you are at Gimp, this will cost you tons of money.

-- "Smart Objects" in PS. There is no debate which is better. Working with Vector to Raster conversion is clean. You can open EPS in Gimp, but the conversion is terrible. To get it to look right after rasterizing will cost several hours.

-- Photoshop has CMYK, various RGB modes, etc.

-- Text in Gimp...

I thought it was well-understood that Gimp is not meant to be a replacement for Photoshop. A half-user of PS will pay for the program in less than a week if you consider $$/hr.

With that said, I always tell beginners to try out Gimp before trying Photoshop. The first things one must master is working with layers and pixel manipulation and Gimp is a free way to learn that. Photo manipulation is not everyone's cup o' tea either, and telling someone to get PS before Gimp is like telling a new pianist to buy a Steinway when a Casio will do well for the initial learning curve. Moving to Photoshop is more or less learning a few oddities and relearning hot-keys after a certain point, which is really no big deal.
Bloggers giving advice to CEOs. Another hilarious peculiarity of this tech hype.
it is now very hard to get many Google results that contains all your search terms which is why I start to dislike it... for example it gives you "synonyms" or the terms are completly missing.... I sure will give yours a try
So why is it that Apple, Google, etc are contributing a lot of code back to llvm/clang when they don't have to? Why is it that no one's created a long-lasting fork of xfree86/xorg, even though those are also under permissive licenses? Why is it that there are many commercial consulting companies for PostgreSQL that donate everything they write back to the community? Conversely, why is it that MySQL under Oracle, while GPLed, is criticized for not being open and contributing meaningful information about the project?
Now that is a valid criticism.

The FSF drives a hard line sometimes, frankly I think more ire should be directed at TiVo than FSF. The uppity jerks.
There may be companies which take from BSD/MIT/Apache 2.0-licensed projects without giving back, but I also see plenty of companies who do give back. Examples:

- The Apache Foundation
- LLVM/Clang
- FreeBSD
- Google

Heck, even Microsoft has started releasing code under the Apache 2.0 license (e.g., https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp).
Nowadays in the wide I mainly see two use cases for GPL code, either the person want to limit its use to encourage purchase of a commercial license or to prevent its use by a conccurrent, or the second use I see is people wanting to make a political statement of some sort.

I respect both use cases but ultimately I consider GPL code more like teasing to me, because as great as this code is, I know there is some limitations with this code and I won't be able to use it as freely as I'd want now or in the future.

So now, to spare me the mental pain of knowing there is a great GPL project I know I can't use, the first thing I do when I discover a new project is to check its license and if it's GPL I stop reading, plain and simple. I highly respect people releasing GPL code, I highly respect their motivations and somehow their political engagement but I treat it like if this code didn't exist or is a binary.

And for my own code I use the MIT License when I choose to share it with the world.