skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Isn't this exactly what they are working on here?

These things are not autonomous. They are overgrown remote controlled devices. Perhaps you are under the impression they move about in the same fashion as Google's self-driving car?

Now there's a good example. Google's self-driving car is advancing the art and it is doing so with the goal of delivering a product millions of people can use. What are they focusing on? A remotely controlled car? Nope. No, they are focusing on sensing, algorithms, computing and all of the core items I discussed in my prior post. Their work is useful. Little magnetic cubes or pneumatic jumping machines aren't even in the same orbit. do you realize that there is virtually no difference in the way the Boston Dynamics machines move and perform when compared to what MIT and others have been doing for decades? Sure, they can pull off better tricks because computers are better now and that's about it.

Don't get me wrong. I love them. Hell, I wish I had the pull to extract that kind of money from the government to play with technology like that. I'd be fun. In the real world you'd implode inside of a year (or a few) if you didn't advance past that stage quickly.
Except I had the impression that restarting shelved projects, catching up after delays, etc. is going to end up costing more money than the shutdown saves. Not to mention the effect on the economy if it goes on for too long, which will affect tax revenues.

[Edited to add:] Also, my understanding is that you can't get an EIN (Employer ID Number) issued during the shutdown, which means you can't legally start a new business and hire employees until this is over.
To provide a contrary viewpoint here, NPR's Planet Money had a rather good piece a few weeks back on the downsides to drastically scaling back Military Contractors.

The basic gist is that if contractors that supply all of one component or product dry up, those former employees don't just stay unemployed, they go to work in other industries. But, if in 5, 10, or 20 years, you decide you actually need that component or product again, you can't just flip a switch and re-activate manufacturing. The knowledge is gone, all the workers you had who were trained in the process have gone into new fields, and rebuilding your military production infrastructure is very painful. For a good example of this in recent years, FOGBANK.

FOGBANK was a mysterious classified material critical to creating nuclear warheads. Following the turn-down of the cold war and missile reduction plans, the manufacturing plant was mothballed. And the process for creating it was so secretive that no one remembered quite how to make it. Decades later, when aging missiles needed replacements, the process for manufacturing was lost and scientists couldn't reproduce the process based on the information left behind. The US government ended up spending a decade and over eighty million dollars just to research and rediscover the manufacturing process for this one particular component.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK

Obviously FOGBANK is an extreme case, but it's a fair point worth considering. Drastic cuts to military contractors may leave large holes in military supply, especially of sensitive and classified materials.

NPR Planey Money episode: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/23/214928040/episode-...
Qatar made a lot of controversy here quite recently, as part of the crazy World Cup efforts for the next decade or so. Part of those efforts are removing all those roundabouts why? This article can say what it wants about R/As, but the maintenance improvements are lost as the rest of the traffic grinds to a halt and it severely impacts the local economy with crippling traffic.

People do not respect the flow of traffic here, being the major issue. It is hard to get people to use R/As properly if they do not understand intent. Traffic frequently grinds to a halt as people cut-across, going from the most inner lane out of the roundabout, or circle around in the outer lane and continue to the next exit. It is so common it is the common cause of accidents in the country's capital of Doha. Since the R/A is the nexus of the major chokepoints, an accident causes more severe traffic. The massive traffic is now compounded by the fact they must build intersections inside the center of the R/A, and tear up the road to properly re-align. This never goes smoothly, and the countries traffic has become worse over the last few months as people continue to do this.

So, perhaps the cost is lower, but traffic dynamics are terrible in large cities where the rules are misunderstood, which I assume to be all of them.
Ha. Now we know why the Imperial army's huge lumbering ATATs have legs instead of wheels.
At the income level they set, sadly yes.
Totally thought this was a name for a new model S model, a la kindle fire.
> If American welfare is any indications you'll have generations of people who will live within this free money system, do nothing, learn nothing and demand more and more over time. They will all have iPhones, huge flat screen TV's and never work a day in their lives.

There has been a five-year over lifetime limit on welfare since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in '96 that replaced AFDC (Aid for Families with Dependent Children) with TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). And even before then, there was only scant evidence that such a phenomenon occurred.

Do you have a citation for that?

(EDIT: It also allowed states to redirect federal welfare funds to unrelated purposes. Try living on 110/mo in Mississippi, for example. Let alone affording an iPhone. Plus in all states, there is some work requirement. [1])

[1] http://www.mdhs.state.ms.us/ea_tanf.html
Shouldn't it be Sir Jonathan then?
Said the same thing about the Middle East. In the Gulf, Indian community is large as well, and they seem to be much more adept at understanding "the rules" than the European and American expats who complain a lot.
you stated an opinion. while i think the gov't shutdown is stupid and it's a lame attempt at killing Obamacare, it is not in fact about "trying to stop poor people from receiving subsidies on their private health insurance."
Canada can help them with a solution. It's called "immigration". Oh, wait, just two days ago President Putin made a comment in a meeting of the United Russia party that Russia does not need any more salespeople to work in market stalls (a common profession of illegal immigrants in Russia) but that Russia does need more immigrant construction workers. So I think they probably have already picked up on Canada's solution. Note that Russia already has over 140 million population. That is the population that the USA had in about 1945. Too many people can be a burden which is why India and China have so many socioeconomic problems.

It's funny how so many Americans think of Russia as the old Communist enemy, but it really isn't. In fact, the Soviet Union was never much of an enemy to the USA. It was all a fabrication of America's military industrial complex. But now, today, in the 21st century, Russia is a SERIOUS threat to the USA. Russia will dominate the USA by the end of this century unless America stops trying to repeat the actions of the past. Times have changed and America needs radical, even revolutionary shifts in attitudes and behavior if the USA does not want to be subjugated. Military type actions are absolutely the wrong way to solve this problem, and are a leading cause of the fading of America's image in the world. I count NSA spying as one of those military type actions. The world of James Bond was in its heyday at the dawn of the 20th century before the |First World War, and by the 1960's it was in severe decline. The solutions of the first 60 years of the 20th century will no longer work to strengthen the American empire.
For what it's worth when I took my driving test in ~1999 they were called rotaries but the dynamics and physical layout was more like roundabouts from your pdf. i.e. If properly entered there was no 'weave' area, it's just that there always seemed to be multiple cars in the rotary with no clue causing weaving. Ironically I've been back to that area recently and it's been physically changed and now looks much more like the rotary layout in your pdf.
Switzerland has twice the amount of asylum seekers per capita, compared to the EU average.

That seems to be the result of a fairly open asylum policy. Some people find it's too open and complain about that.

With the concept of a basic income like this, I suppose their asylum policy would have to become more restrictive.
Adobe ID hacked, email suggests
Well, well, a downvote? I guess struck a nerve by asking why alternative languages, the underlying interest of such a blog post, is upsetting. But I am not sure why given the context.

I guess I will stop asking about the differences between Go and Nimrod.
I can say that, in Australia, we simply have 'Tall Poppy Syndrome' which Wikipedia defines to be "... a social phenomenon in which people of genuine merit are resented, attacked, cut down, or criticised because their talents or achievements elevate them above or distinguish them from their peers."

Wouldn't go so far as to say we 'hate' Silicon Valley.
Such general statements can only be inaccurate.

We're having about 3TB of PostgreSQL data on 4 servers. It works very well for us.
Why do you believe a larger sample is needed?

You need an exhauseted state space. You cannot empirically infer a legitimate probabliliy, eg n/100m miles) with only a single failure observation, if there are 100 possible ways to fail. At best you have data on (1) of (N) ways to fail, but surely in the case of car accidents N=large.

A total of 2,650 cars were delivered to retail customers in North America during 2012, 4,900 during the first quarter of 2013, and 5,150 during the second quarter of 2013

Assuming 13000 cars on the road, each car would have logged 9k miles to get 110m road miles, as quoted by Tesla. But we know from past industry experience, that road fires are proportionate also with fleet age.

So, if anything we the probability of a road fire is likely to go up as more failure modes are discovered (including by chance), and as the vehicles cycle through a normal working life.
ESPN The Mag Body Issue 2013: Colin Kaepernick
US scientists boycott Nasa conference over China ban
As a Brit, who quite understands the failings of Government IT (#) I still think it must be an awful lot simpler just to ask "Are you an American? Yes - then get cover"

really guys, we all know technology cannot fix foolish requirements.

(#) www.oss4gov.org
Isn't your Parliament prorogued at the moment?
Meanwhile in California it is easier for corporate lobbyists to pass bills through the proposition system than it is to go through congress.
Here's the email...

----------

Important Password Reset Information

To view this message in a language other than English, please click here.

We recently discovered that an attacker illegally entered our network and may have obtained access to your Adobe ID and encrypted password. We currently have no indication that there has been unauthorized activity on your account.

To prevent unauthorized access to your account, we have reset your password. Please visit www.adobe.com/go/passwordreset to create a new password. We recommend that you also change your password on any website where you use the same user ID or password. In addition, please be on the lookout for suspicious email or phone scams seeking your personal information.

We deeply regret any inconvenience this may cause you. We value the trust of our customers and we will work aggressively to prevent these types of events from occurring in the future. If you have questions, you can learn more by visiting our Customer Alert page, which you will find here.

Adobe Customer Care
I was under the impression the 1:12 vote already happened and was voted with an overwhelming majority, e.g.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21647937

http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/03/switzerlan...

Could you explain the discrepancy ?
Not that I specifically care for that argument, but half of American states have lower population than Norway. Choosing to say "I guess Los Angeles could do it" may have a better ring to it than "I guess Colorado or Alabama or South Carolina or Louisiana or Kentucky or Oregon or Oklahoma or Connecticut or Iowa or Mississippi or Arkansas or Kansas or Utah or Nevada and New Mexico together or Nebraska and West Virginia and Idaho together or Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island together or Montana, Delaware, the Dakotas, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming together could do something like that", but it makes the US look like it has a lot more people than it does.

Now before anyone comes up with "population isn't everything", that's the problem parent decided to mention.
Why do brothers tend to be protective of their "little" sisters?
The phrase "big brother" is watching is actually true (my own experience). My question Why is it that brothers tend to protect their "little sisters" unlike with male siblings. Does this have to do with evolution (maybe for survival) ?
Not to mention this does away with all the administrative overhead of the dozens of piecemeal welfare programs we have in the US. Rather than whitelisting narrow sets of allowed expenditures and making people prove that they're poor for each program, I suspect giving people an income that allows them to live decently without all the red tape and attached strings will make for a much more efficient way to fight poverty and improve quality of life.

That said, I don't think a basic income experiment with a successful outcome would cause us to take the notion seriously in the US.

Portugal's decriminalization of drugs in 2001 comes to mind. By all accounts, it was a great success, which we've largely ignored. The dozens of countries with single-payer health care systems that deliver better care for far less money are another regrettable example.

Here's hoping Switzerland undertakes what looks to be a fascinating experiment.
FYI: You have to live 12 years consecutively in Switzerland, pass a tests and a personal hearing done by the local government to get a citizenship by naturalization.

Switzerland has one of the most strict immigration rules in Europe.

Source: http://www.bfm.admin.ch/content/bfm/en/home/themen/buergerre...
No-one is trying to silence you. But what you said is off-topic for the subject under question. I probably agree with your political sympathies; but I don't think you should have said it here.
Listen to Boheners reasoning when he refused to allow a vote on the senate bill[1]. He sites employers not wanting to hire people because they have to subsidize their insurance, and a medical device tax that goes towards providing subsidies to individuals.
1. http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/153432/Speaker_John_...
I'd love to see a site like this specifically focused on business news. Keeping up with the latest news in business is important, but I've found most business papers are so full of useless fluff stories that it drowns out the ones that are most important.
Cambogia Garcinia Extract Free Trial Offer | Where To Buy Garcinia Cambogia
You can compare the cost of living in the two cities using numbeo (posted here some months ago)
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
Do you remember where you read that most people on welfare in the US live with expensive hardware but do little work? I'm curious about different ways of providing welfare and the behaviour of people w
under each.
> The GP is not a "political slogan", it's a statement of fact.

The two are not mutually exclusive.
thanks to all replies
I knew I've seen that chart somewhere. Apparently one of one the first infographics ever made ... according to OkTrends.

(src: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/10-charts-about-sex/)
Exactly like how in the US, college costs magically rise to the amount students can get in loans.

It is a very bad idea to guarantee income instead of controlling costs. All it does is allow the people making money to make more money and possibly take that income out of their country for further investment.
In cases where unions are involved, the terms of the furloughs are usually negotiated with the unions beforehand. I don't know about contractors specifically, but for civil servants, their unions were definitely involved in the furlough negotiations during sequestration. In this case I don't know how much they'd get to say since the entire federal government has shut down and the issues go all the way to the highest parts of the government.

Also keep in mind furloughs are not layoffs - just unpaid leave.
A sensible national health system would be as simple as changing the Medicare minimum age to zero and abolishing Medicaid. Do you think this requires a constitutional ammendment? And do you think there's the slightest chance today's conservatives would vote for it?
Show HN: SKSlideViewController (Slide to reveal View Controller for iOS)
Hi, congrats on quality results. Will you open source the algorithm and the implementation, as you were mentioning on HN few months ago? What are your startup plans?
That's not really clueless. I also lived near an overpass with ramps (where you can get on/off the upper street by a ramp, which is, naturally, unidirectional) and since the upper street was not divided it was possible to drive on a ramp in a wrong way. And I have seen couple cars doing just that. From my understanding, quite a few drivers do not really know traffic rules beyond "red means stop" and just follow other cars. If there are no other cars to follow they quickly get confused by any unusual road structure.
47 Prominent Technologists to NSA: We Need Better Technical Oversight
Yeah, people forget how revolutionary it was. I bought an iPhone 3G in June 2009. I remember showing it to colleagues and friends, who were in awe about the whole experience. Their phones and smartphones looked primitive next to the iPhone.

This was around the same time the HTC Magic came out, although it was clearly a copy of the iPhone, it was a toy in comparison.

Now that Android has come a long way and even old ladies are carrying iPhones, it looks as if we had modern smartphones for ages :).
The US is not the world. In the world the 5c is as expensive as the top og the line Android phones.

The 5c costs over 800 usd in Europe, if that's catering to the low end, I have a bridge to sell you ;)
FoaaS: F**k off as a Service
Which sounds awfully different from saying that poor people shouldn't get subsidies.

But, since you bring it up, why should or shouldn't healthcare be coupled to employment? One could argue it's the cause for much of the trouble we're in, with a lack of portability, increasing costs (same reason sports seats have become prohibitively expensive for many individuals), so what's inherently evil about employers admitting that increased labor costs will almost necessarily impact their hiring?

For that matter, why is or isn't a medical device tax the best way of funding those subsidies?

Those are the kinds of things that we could be discussing–tho probably not as comments to this particular article article–not doing what you are.

To be specific, you're preemptively ascribing the worst possible motives to anyone who disagrees with you on a pretty charged political issue, in a fairly off-topic quip in response to nobody, which is a pretty bad way of raising the level of debate. Debate the issues if you want, but your original comment is going to be difficult for you to justify as anything but partisan politics.

People who disagree with you may not be inherently evil. Hard to believe, sometimes, but no matter what side of an argument you're on, it's not a very productive or proper default assumption. Assuming bad faith won't help anyone, whatever the side of almost whatever the issue.
Benchmarking spray.io for Scala
A redistribution of consumption does not increase prices overall, although in the short run you would expect apples to be more expensive and yachts to be cheaper. An overall increase in consumption, because poor people save a smaller fraction of their money, does lead to inflation, though also to economic growth.
Do these readings also say that free markets auto-regulate themselves?
"Its cost controls are weak, at best. There's no way the country will come out the other side of this with cheaper healthcare."

Thankfully the cost controls are existant, at least, which is by inspection better than the status quo. This existence also renders your conclusion on costs a complete non sequitur.

Trivia: as much as conservatives hate Obamacare (spoilers: a lot), they can't resist using the cost savings it generates in their stunt budgets because the numbers don't work without the Obamacare savings.
The "welfare recipients with plasma TVs" is a common trope that comes up every election, but is (almost) entirely untrue.

I've actually lived on the wrong side of the tracks in a poverty-stricken industrial city.

The reality is that most people don't have big screen TVs. The home of the average poor person that I've seen, welfare or otherwise, is pretty damned frugal. The few that do - and they do exist - finance these luxuries via rent-to-own shops and loans.

You know you're in a poor part of town when suddenly all the payday loan places and rent-to-own places pop up.

As one might expect, these luxuries never actually last very long. Not only do these people not have the actual financial ability to afford them, but they acquired them on predatory rates (either loan or rent-to-own terms). These items are repo'ed quickly.

So, in summary, the bulk of the poor don't live on expensive hardware. There are some that (unwisely) acquire expensive hardware with the help of predatory lenders, but don't get to keep it.

The myth of the ever-idle welfare recipient, munching cheetos while hanging out in front of their big screen TV, is very much just that: a myth.
Swiss immigration rules are quite strict, maybe a bit relaxed for UE nationals, but still strict.
Afaik you generally need to have a job offer in order to move to Swizerland and take residence.

Check for example this sites/news:
http://www.swissworld.org/en/faq/living_in_switzerland/
http://world.time.com/2013/05/01/bachmann-on-switzerland/
http://voices.yahoo.com/how-move-united-states-switzerland-3...

And Swiss don't like too much immigrats, and even cross border workers: http://www3.varesenews.it/english/articolo.php?id=184350
Valid point. We know how MS has managed to keep up their sales point monopoly for decades (forced Windows sales via mandatory pre-installations). We know how they wanted to offer exclusively their browser on Windows (the EU disagreed with that idea).
Why not? Note that these are not std::vectors. Copying 12 bytes will probably be cheaper than indirect access through a reference.
It's probably time to vote with our wallets again.
From the original article:

In March, Swiss voters backed some of the world's strictest controls
on executive pay, forcing public companies to give shareholders a
binding vote on compensation.

A separate proposal to limit monthly executive pay to no more than
what the company's lowest-paid staff earn in a year, the so-called
1:12 initiative, faces a popular vote on November 24.

The two articles you linked to refer to the first proposal.