skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes but the US military already has armed robots. I could see this maybe being used as a transport but even that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be used to kill people.

Though granted if the people it's transporting have guns that's a moot point.
The updated Atlas may even be more-frightening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD6Okylclb8
MongoDB is at a scale community-wise where they are growing by leaps and bounds as MongoDB ends up in many places where MySQL used to rule and for many newer applications where the relational and transaction benefits of MySQL are unnecessary. You can find mature MongoDB bindings for everything and now assume that they are mature for pretty much every community you care about. When people come to programming for the first time, many are likely to now learn MongoDB as their first DB and not MySQL. With all this in mind, MongoDB is now basically a large snowball picking up lots of small wins everywhere because of ubiquity and gaining mass. MongoDB is the second major open source DB win since MySQL.

Given conformity, social proof, product awareness, large enough community to bet your non-tech business on it, do you doubt that it can't grow a bunch over the next 5+ years? It might be dead to you, but it's the next big thing to the rest of the world who are not as enlightened as we.
Gerrymandering is not about creating hyper-majorities. That would be counterproductive - votes above 50% are wasted. It is about maximizing number of likely seats. Also the country has sorted itself geographically (e.g. cities vs. rural) along ideological lines, so non-gerrymandered districts might as much if not more one-sided.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/17/r...
[2] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114989/government-shutdow...

[Edit]
Hyper-majority may be a result, but not on the side controlling redistricting: the opposite side may be gerrymandered into few concentrated districts.
There's a counter argument to that, in that it's a job like any other that takes time to learn:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20111112/COLUMNIST/1111...
Gov Shutdown? National Weather Service Issues Coded Message ‘PLEASE PAY US’
I think it varies. I have been walking along the 90% unemployment regions of Brussels a few years ago, and just knocking on a few random doors just "oh sorry you're not Tom" excuse for a look around, sometimes a conversation (I worked - and was bored to death - in the area, so for a month, that was my lunch hobby) (you wouldn't believe just how fertile ground conspiracy theories find here. Especially for a European country).

I hate to say it but unless I got entirely the wrong impression, you're wrong. For most of these unemployed their friends and families would take weeks or months to notice. Hell, the staff at the local supermarket will probably notice before friends will.

You see the same in the paper. They're isolated, unemployed, and there's large numbers of them. So it happens quite regularly that one of them dies - and if it's for a dumb or catchy reason, the papers go after it. Carbon monoxide poisoning is always reported. Someone who was ill - and this is a country with nearly-free healthcare before you say money - and didn't go to the hospital at all, then died, or someone who was seriously ill, but with little symptoms at first, got sent home, then died in their sleep. There's usually at least some mention of how they arrived at this conclusion and it tends to include how they were found. Depressingly often it's the smell or a loan collector, or- less often, thankfully - panicked kids who found this happened to their sole parent, then did something like running screaming outside, attack a police officer (not seriously, but enough to get them to "tell their mam"). Even if they have friends and family, that someone disappears from these neighborhoods without telling anyone is not exactly a rare event, usually related to crime they committed, so it does not raise any alarms.

So no, in most cases I don't think it would be visible at all. Some areas in large cities that nobody really goes voluntarily to would go quiet. And yes, the supermarket would notice.
Trades have been reversed before, though.
What does the name have to do with anything?

A few dozen people screw up and the bots see a stock go from worthless to hot in a short period of time and jump on board.
-- while in motion.

In all seriousness it was running a good 20kph in the video, I wouldn't be surprised if this thing was deployed alongside canine units. Perhaps even apprehending vehicles?

The cheetah has great speed but its real power is it's turning ability: cars can go fast but they require a serious amount of space and time to reverse direction safely.
I didn't see any citations for his claim that melatonin saves you an hour sleep per night. His entire argument is premised on this, but he barely discusses it - he just states it as a fact. Did I just miss something? Is there research supporting this claim?
Wow. This is better than anything I thought was going to come from the "government shutdown."
Food Fight: L.A. Restaurant Claims to Make Country's Best Pizza
And the PR war is joined.
I don't think startups need brand management - what they need, in my opinion, is "space management" - they need to bring awareness to the general business space they are operating in - so if you're in a start up building predictive analytics software, you want to bring awareness about the benefits of that solution. The best startups define their own space - Hubspot being a great example with their early definition of inbound marketing which is now standard part of our lexicon.

PR is most definitely not something that startups just do when they mess up - PR, done correctly, works by extending you name (and space) out to the world. It's also easy to look at the success of a company and not recognize that there was likely a coordinated, deliberate PR strategy behind it that resulted in dozens of article that promote the brand.

All that being said, I agree with the core argument of the article - namely that spending a lot of money, early on, on an external PR agency is likely to be a waste of money. I would add, however, that if you can align your product with a PR agency or person that has actual relationships with press in the area the start up works in, then you can get value.

The biggest mistake I see is when a startup hires a PR agency because they are a big name, but lack the fundamental relationships with the press you care about. At the end of the day, the value the PR agency brings is those relationships - so if you are going to hire someone, find a specialist in your field rather than a big-name generalist who will get you in Techcrunch but miss your core audience of actual prospects.
Let's leave it at this "It hasn't had a single minute of downtime". So with the shutdown does your Organizing For America paycheck still clear?
Thanks from me also to the author, I can't remember since when I've been using this - super useful.
If I could downvote this article, I would.
I've had the exact opposite experience.

I don't personally know a single American that hates Canada or Mexico. In fact, I would say the opinion of Canada is between neutral and quite positive. They've just about never done anything to wrong us, have been a good border partner, and an amazing trade + energy partner.

I also don't know a single person that hates Silicon Valley. Most Americans, in my opinion, are clueless about Silicon Valley, outside of knowing that there are technology companies there. Why? Because the people / culture and politics of Silicon Valley don't matter to them and their day to day lives.
"terraform my home making it inhabitable to me while they make it habitable to themselves."

Inhabitable means habitable. [0]

You may need the word "uninhabitable."

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO3Wfenv4Mo
No matter what the NSA and the FBI thinks of it, people will keep finding ways to converse and engage in commerce on their own terms.

Their efforts just help the next incarnation work better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjy_7haflaM

Edit: Only one downvote? Come on, HN. Impress me.
How about you run 20 vector machines ? Each only identifies how likely one reason is (using distance from separating plane as a "how sure is this SVM" measure). Besides, SVM do not have a particularly good reputation due to the need for good kernels, which requires either massive computing power (just have 10 million kernels) or people with very good domain knowledge. And if you need people with very good domain knowledge, why bother with AI ?

AI is hard and people who know both a lot about statistics, AI and programming AND a lot about, say insurance claims, well good look finding them. People with good knowledge about insurance claims and good knowledge of excel, they're, well, not a dime a dozen, but certainly much easier to find.
How many startups can claim over $1 billion in transactions handle after only two years in operation?

For people that can figure out how to secure themselves against arrest, that's a lot of money that wants to be spent. I am surprised it was an American that was behind it because we are the home of the War on Drugs and many SR customers are Americans. A foreigner operating in the right country can make all that revenue with a lot less risk. Going after this opportunity is a no brainer for some people.
Having recently visited SF, I can't really say I was impressed with the neighborhoods surrounding these tech companies. If there is a greater level of local commerce happening, it's not apparent visually.
There's no little indicator, however you can click the "threads" link up at the top to see all of your comments and their replies.
> You need some time to learn the ropes before you can get shit done.

I used to hold the same view. Just yesterday I decided that if it takes a significant portion of one term just to learn the ropes, things are broken. They should stop learning and start doing.

They seem to be learning the wrong lessons, anyway. They end up learning how to consolidate and maintain power-bases.
I think you are confused.
Our congressional representatives, by and large, are doing exactly what their constituents want. While congress as a whole has a dismal approval rating, individual congressmen do not. That is, in fact, the real problem.

There are many causes for this. Gerrymandering is not really one of them.
I guess the single-member district system leads to your two-party system. If you had voting districts large enough to choose e.g. 10 or 20 representatives, then even parties with only 10% or 5% support in the population would get their representatives elected. And you'd have a multi-party congress.

Look at how political parties come and go in some European countries (not the UK, though). Not instantly, but in a 20 year time scale or so, the situation can change quite a lot in these countries.
Actually, gerrymandering does the opposite. The goal of gerrymandering for your party is as many seats as possible where you have a large but not super-massive advantage. You'd rather have three 55-45 seats than a 65-35 and two 50-50s, whereas you try to stick your opponent with as many 70-30s as possible.
According to Amazon review here are his (Mark Levin, conservative talk radio person) proposals:

1. Term limits, including for justices.

Sure, why not start out with the one everyone agrees with.

2. Repealing Amendment 17 and returning the election of senators to state legislatures

Here's another meh one. At least everyone can agree with it.

3. A congressional supermajority to override Supreme Court decisions (overruling what could be a stacked court)

This is where he starts to go off the rails into conservative uptopianism. This would be just awful. If you don't want a stacked court don't confirm the justices.

4. Spending limit based on GDP

Awful idea. WWII wants it's financing back.

5. Taxation capped at 15%

A worse idea than #4 if possible.

6. Limiting the commerce clause, and strengthening private property rights

Sigh...

7. Power of states to override a federal statute by a three-fifths vote.

Hmm, I remember something else about states rights and "three fifths" in American history.
Registry records show that Mieses applied for a learner’s permit in 1999 and 2000, but that he never obtained a full license because he failed to pay fines imposed after he was ticketed for speeding in Lawrence in 1999. His last contact with the Registry was in 2001, when he obtained an identification card, registry records show.

Since 1999, he has been ticketed by police 16 times, in Lawrence, Methuen, Roxbury, Andover, and New Hampshire, according to registry records.

In June, the Registry notified the National Driver Register that Mieses was a habitual traffic offender whose right to drive in Massachusetts was revoked until 2017, records show.
This part is the most exciting to me. - "obsoletes the idea of opening a document. Essentially, all documents can be open all the time. All you have to do to interact with one is to zoom in close enough."
I would point out the tactics concerning the targeted application of protests (time and location), targeted third-party vote syphoning, and traditional hyper-local "get out the vote" programs. But, I have been down-voted for my opinions before, and I really don't feel like responding to negative replies tonight.
Or possibly the advertised feature they're interested in is 'ridiculous number of attached monitors'. Intel GPUs generally only have a couple of display connectors; if you want a card with a lot of physical ports you'll want to buy a discrete GPU whether or not it support 3D acceleration.
A little indicator up by your name would be a good idea, and presumably wouldn't be too difficult. Adding email into the mix would further complicate things, likely more than pg has time for (and honestly, I kind of like the simplicity of this site).
Maybe that's the case. But as a new user, I find it very difficult to keep track of comments. Let alone any other standard social features that you expect from a community based site. Have a look at SO and see how friendly it is in comparison. HN even throttles link posts for new users; it's quite frustrating. When I post links from certain IPs (presumably because of my country), they don't get posted at all. The same links posted using a US based IP go through.
Blackberry scams?
Same here. Used to have a massive tower with Win7 and all sorts of Linux flavours booted onto it, 6 monitors and 2 laptops.

Sold it all, bought a single MBPr. Haven't looked back since. It literally took me 3 hours to become full familiar with it. Imported all my documents, installed my apps, good to go.
I guess you could strap a bomb to the thing and send it off towards the enemy. I could see it carrying ammo or other supplies to soldiers scattered on a battlefield.
Term limits and repealing the 17th Amendment are pretty bad, and it just gets worse from there.
In general, after the 'easy' gains on a decently researched machine learning problem have been done, a new approach that gets, say, a 2% increase (say, from 91% to 93%) is considered a significant breakthrough and happens rarely - 5-10 years or so. 80%->85% is great. 80%->95% could be called work of the gods, given the 4x reduction in error rate.
Wow. And I thought it was cool seeing self-driving cars around Google's campus. Boston Dynamics must be one interesting place to work.
Where did I even mention hydrogen?
I fail to understand why a dysfunctional system is better than one where expense proposals are matched by revenue/borrowing plans.

This is the government of the United States we are talking about, not some teenager's budget where we have to come up with ways to make them 'feel bad' about spending.

>> You want to make it easier for the government to increase debt as a percentage of GDP. I'd rather it was more difficult.

No, I want to make sure that those who pass spending bills are also responsible for finding the revenue. It does not preclude the possibility of keeping debt in control - if they feel that debt/gdp ratio should be in check, then they should keep their spending proposals in check too. One cannot approve large spending, and then complain when the payment is due.
It's funny to hear someone say this. I just went from a Toyota Camry (a relatively big car) to Toyota Prius-C, and I have the opposite feelings. Doing a shoulder check is very hard with the Prius, because of the weird back of the car. I now as a result hesitate driving it a lot, instead opting to use my brother's Corolla.

I do use the Prius in the city though, I easily get 75+ mpg when supermiling.
To be fair, ASIMO is not even in the same league as ATLAS or any of Boston Dynamics' other projects. I've always gotten the feeling that ASIMO is more of a press play by Honda.
That's how it should be! Pity it's probably actually a pain to use in real life :P
If you owned property, would you allow huge numbers of tourists access to it if you had no staff onsite and no idea when you were going to be able to get staff? Now consider if you owned 401 pieces of property* across the country. Some of these are historic sites that are pretty delicate. Some of these consist of thousands of square miles of wilderness where people get killed even when there ARE park rangers around. These people are charged with protecting the nation's heritage. They're not just going to allow somebody to wander into the Lincoln Memorial and start chiseling their name on the walls. And of course there are liability issues.

*The National Parks Service has 401 units. The actual number of individual sites is higher.
Ulbricht denies all Silk Road charges
Ask HN: Did anyone successfully finish both drchrono questions on time?
I managed to solve the first one on time (nice question, not too difficult, the hard part was getting it done in time and accurately) and thought at first that the one hour allotted is per question, not for both. Perhaps I'm old, or slow, but I felt 30 minutes per question is a bit challenging. Am I the only one? Did anyone get both on time and passed the automated tests? if so, would you please reply with what language you used, how many years of experience, and what is your age. (And if you are some sort of a certified genius, don't forget to mention it as well).
Thank you
Doesn't seem that hard to accomplish - all the tech is there, gyroscopic stabilizers, auto feed and trigger, targeting systems, etc. - it would all consume a lot of power, though...
The odd thing is how we keep seeing these impressive prototypes and yet we don't see the deployment of even the five-years-ago prototypes.

It's interesting to think about the factors that go into this. I could imagine:

* High unit cost

* High maintenance cost, especially in remote locations.

* It is only useful in remote locations where wheeled vehicles can't go.

* It requires special training to operate.

* It doesn't have enough intelligence to avoid obstacles by itself in the remote, rough locations it would otherwise be fit for.

Other ideas?
Software Releases: When is Good Enough, Good Enough
Yes, that has always stopped me from doing some things, I would like to do covertly and aren't exactly ok. But there is no safe way to do it. How do you make sure that you won't get into traffic accident when going on mission or returning from it. It would be really nice to hear how you make roads 100% safe.

I'm also too security oriented and been monitoring this field for over 15 years. So I know how hard it is to be absolutely anonymous. I also know that my Finnish & English aren't exactly textbook examples, so I can be profiled easily out even if I would be technically 100% anonymous.

I always surf the web from virtual container which is fully reset after each session. I also don't ever process, email, im, web, archives or what ever on host system. I also have completely separate (hardware), similarly safe configuration for handling PGP/GPG encrypted messages, which is connected only via serial-link so I can view the ASCII armored payload before sending it for processing. Anything else than ascii armored payload isn't being sent over that 7 bit link ever.

It's also obvious that I have prepaid dumb phone(s), one for each identity, which are circulated on random schedule. I only use those phones at single location (without other tracking devices), because moving with those would allow linking my (moving) position with my other phone(s). Making it easy to correlate those. Yes, I know this is non-optimum solution, if you're expecting someone to hunt you down. But it's good for generic privacy as long as you don't expect anyone to be there waiting for you.

Getting rid of habits is also very hard and requires huge effort. That single thing (service, program, password, etc), word or phrase you just used, will single you out from larger group.
What we're seeing now in Congress is the risk of having a considerable number of new members. We now see a substantial minority which cares more about ideology than maintaining the function of the institution.

If everyone in Congress is relatively new, power will end up concentrating in the people who are in Washington for the long term: lobbyists and staffers, all unelected. Beyond that, term-limited politicians have less of an incentive to please their current employers (the electorate) and more to please potential future employers (lobbyists).
No rigorous formulation? The black swan has a very simple mathematical model: an unlikely event with an effect so great that it will affect the expected value. For example, a greater risk of dying after 20 or 30 years of use - which has not yet been studied. In your calculation of ROI you completely ignore unknown long term effects.

Yes it's hard and often impossible to quantify black swans. But keeping them in mind is a way to avoid overconfident articles like the one you wrote.
Yeah, I think it's pretty much down to the cost - humans are still cheaper and way more effective/flexible...
or, even better, make a "second page" of HN that's more prominent (like a link in the nav), so that it's not as if there is a front page, and then several other pages, but a front page AND a second page and then the rest...therefore, articles that are in this limbo can get some extra attention, and I would assume that, having differentiated a "second page" from the following pages, people would be at least as likely (if not more) to checkout what's not on the front page.
DARPA also financed the Internet. I think we can expect similar public benefits to come out of this research one day.
Actually, for pretty much any NLP problem the state of art is open source - they often aren't packaged as convenient libraries, but the actual best-in-field methods usually have both detailed algorithm descriptions in the published papers (from which we can and sometimes do a direct reimplementation), and a reference implementation with available source, that they used to get the measurements proving that it really is state of the art. Sure, those research implementations tend to be 'not-production' level of polish, often needing some pain to install and convert your particular data; but they are available. In a few cases the best known method is a commercial implementation; but then usually the #2 implementation is almost as good and that's available.