skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
AGI is a very weird field, in that approximately half the practitioners are getting experimental results, half are getting formal mathematical results, and half are complete crackpots outside their own field of Narrow AI expertise. These attributes can even appear in the same person, though Ray Kurzweil and Google are famous for seeming more crackpot-y than many for essentially claiming that a sufficiently large deep-learning or neural-network algorithm will at some point develop sapience ;-).

Which is obviously wrong. Everyone knows it will develop sapience and then develop a fetish for small office implements and destroy humanity.

Ok, to be serious, the guys who are actually doing Real Research into this sort of thing are, IMHO, Juergen Schmidhuber and Marcus Hutter. They are getting formal results in what they call the "new formal science" of "Universal Artificial Intelligence", and their insights into UAI are then leading them back to insights into Narrow AI and Machine Learning. Notice how they keep producing publications in reputable journals, keep getting awards for their papers, and keep getting major research grants? That's called results, and it's what shows they're onto something.

They actually wrote a textbook on the subject, but it is, unfortunately, well beyond my level of background knowledge right now. I would recommend it, however, to anyone who thinks that AGI is going to be as cheap and easy as throwing lots and lots of machines into a single gigantic machine-learning cluster.

On the upside, their algorithms can play a game of Pac-Man. Someone ought to enter them in a Procedural Super Mario competition. But overall, the old dream of "Strong AI" is not a matter of just coming up with the One True Algorithm and crossing the finishing line to victory. Even for the researchers smart enough to see the eventual shape of the finished product, there are lots of intermediate steps still to be solved -- even though we now have a better idea of what they are than before.
Exercise 'can be as good as pills'
The sheer performance of the iPhone blew away Windows Mobile. It was an order of magnitude more responsive than any mobile device before it. The scrolling, the swipe gestures, the pinch to zoom ... it was essentially the first time we had desktop grade performance in your pocket.
IBM with Gerstner? But I think that's similar to Porsche.

GM with Sloan would be a big one I think.
Reminiscing from Richard Maurer(1999)
Not to mention, it's very uncontroversial to say children aren't born tall.
That's true.

However, spam filtering (for sure) and prioritization (maybe) improve the user experience, thus drawing in more clients and retaining the existing base.

Spam filtering, etc., make the service more attractive, boosting the user base, which makes it possible to charge more for the opportunity to show ads to the customer base, which, of course, is how Google gets paid.

Spam filtering, etc., are no different than improving the Search Engine. Both attract more eyeballs and, thus, more ad revenue!
Xerox made a lot of money in pre-IPO investment in Apple, which is why Jobs was given a tour o PARC. If you ever have the chance o playing with a Star and compare it to a Lisa or a Mac, you'll clearly see how much Apple improved over the original ideas.
Okay, so while you disagree with me and the article about the sports analogy, you seemingly still agree with me about startups (which was the central point of my post).
No. The C vs C++ question is simple language vs comprehensive language. A simple language might be preferred for various reasons. For example, code is easier to review, which is Linus Torvalds argument. Bindings to other languages are easier to create. Compiler is simpler, which might be important for embedded and high-reliability jobs.
Nationwide iPhone Availability Checker (US Only)
It is definitely not vague and seems to be very coherent in their description of features that both X and Wayland are lacking. I'm not a Linux dev but their points seem well justified.
Oh brother, its as if some people have learned nothing from the last 6 months (or are actively shilling... apparently you only comment on NSA stories).

When it comes to your personal privacy and security, you must assume that anything that is reasonably possible is being carried out by your adversaries. The recent leaks prove that the NSA will do absolutely anything within its power to further its goal of total information awareness.

All of the NSA revelations could have been predicted (and were predicted) by anyone with some technological skill and a little bit of foresight. If you wait until proof is presented to you, you have already lost; your privacy and security have already been compromised. The game is to think ahead and protect yourself from all possible current and future attacks. There are some people who's very freedom depends on such foresight.
The logical paradox that you can take to court
Yes, but how are he PC makers doing who serve the corps: say Dell, HP, Lenovo? Unless they make a dash for services, and even that is iffy (HP should have had some advantage here), they are all pretty much toast.
Not agreeing to their terms, but acknowledging that the domain of your email will handle your email using their policies, and that the privacy of the content of your email is limited to whatever privacy policies the recipient domain has in place.
Reagan socialized US healthcare, we’re just fighting about how to pay for it
Site is down now, so I'll check it out later. Is this kind of a plug-and-play version of d3.js?
I do this to my son because small children (<3) are such amazing mimics that it's hard to tell if they truly understand a concept without testing positive and negative responses.

I could make my 2.5yo kid seem like a genius to strangers by asking the right questions. As a trivial example, I know he usually says "yes" when asked a question he doesn't really understand.
What does it even mean to "scan" emails? If Google receives the email, saves it to disk and later retrieves it again, maybe reformats it, is that really fundamentally different from a technical point of view? It's all bits and bytes after all.

Targeted advertising is creepy to humans, because there is some notion that the computer "understands" what you are sending and builds up a profile about you. But, if you take a sober technical point of view, it's hard to accuse Google of anything. Maybe Google should educate it's users more how those ads are generated?
I think the more interesting thing here is how less popular of search term perl/php has become. I really can't find a language that is on an upward trend. Why would people be searching for these terms less over time?

EDIT: Nevermind, it's relative to all searches. More terms to search will depress these numbers.
Outside technological bubbles, people don't understand the implications of technology in regards to security and privacy. You're speaking about "tradeoffs" however people don't understand the tradeoff and will think fingerprinting is secure, because look, Apple is doing it.

Therefore it is up to us to make the right choices. That we aren't doing it, choosing instead to defend flawed technological improvements and the companies doing it, is very regrettable.

> This is a disadvantage only when you are on trial. That's a pretty extreme contingency

No dude, that's not the only thing that can happen and it's in no way extreme. Many people do go on trial for trivial things (because shit, in the US at least, suing people is a way of life) and your laptop or phone contains your most secret conversations and desires, being the ultimate incrimination tool, a digital fingerprint of your own mind.

And you don't have to be on any trial. You don't even have to be a suspect in an investigation. It can happen and has happened for laptops or phones to be seized for inspection during routine filters, like by the airport security.

Also, in the US you may live under the rule of the law. What about countries where oligarchies rule, countries where corruption is the norm? What about countries like Rusia, China, India or Brazil?

Just today I read about a story about this traffic cop from my own country that had the bad inspiration of doing his job by fining his own boss for ignoring a red light and exceeding the speed limits. He was later accused of all sort of bullshit and had to fight it in a court of law for 2 years before he was exonerated.

And technology evolves and our devices are gradually becoming our stored memory. What do you think these corrupt officials or organized crime syndicates could do with your own mind, 10 years from now? A lot dude ;-)
Jellyfish Invasion Paralyzes Swedish Reactor
U.S. Government Shutdown
Goodplan app makes planning activities with friends easy
It'd send a powerful message the shareholders really want to shake things up. Gates enabled Ballmer for far too long.
I think he's mostly shortcutting conclusions. Not jumping, just cutting corners. As for evidence: we know from Schneier's previous posts that he actually has some hard evidence, having been provided yet-unknown-number of Snowden documents. In this case I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. We can't, at the moment, know what the documents contain or what they prove. We do know that there are still more stories coming out based on the material.

I think the technical term for withholding the evidence in this case is "embargo".

> fearful of the NSA because they're tracking EVERYONE... except, it's only an assumption.

"Only"? Really? How about the known fiber taps? The splitter rooms?[1] The fact that the NSA tried to belittle their activities by stating that they are "only touching 1.6% of all internet traffic"?[2] Their stated application of three degrees of separation? (Sorry, can't find a reference for this one now.)

Considering that 1.6% of traffic can easily skip all the video and torrent traffic, it leaves quite a lot of communication data to trawl through. I don't remember seeing any good figures so I don't know how much of the global internet traffic routes through US but I guess it's a fair chunk.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

2: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/13/nsa-int...
my current job is so boring but the money is so good ~_~

will probably have a 2-3 month break to hack on some project and return to contracting afterwards, hopefully somewhere more interesting.
Google's Gmail business model has been common knowledge ever since they surfaced it as a new, invitation-only beta.

This whole debate about the appropriateness of a content-driven ad-supported business model has been front and center all along.

It should be sorted out in the marketplace, not the court room.
The lake is interesting, but the images are - striking as they may be - fakes.
That's a pretty good summary. Writing a book is hard, but it is rewarding to actually publish a book.[1] I'm still not sure how I feel about selling them with an average price of $80 though. I'd probably make more money overall that way, but I haven't been able to make myself do it yet. Perhaps at some point.

[1] - My Book - http://buildanappbusiness.com/
Is there a mirror for this?
Ubuntu 13.10 will have Mir as a preview as well, just not enabled by default on the desktop (but, notably, enabled by default on phones)
Interestingly enough, I loaded the page in IE 11 (11.0.9600) and scrolled all the way to the bottom. It initially used around 160 MB, then reached 240 MB by the bottom of the page.

Chrome used around 2.5 GB on my machine.
Data Mining Guy won't put hamburgers on his CC, says insurance companies will eventually retaliate: http://www.economist.com/node/21556263
That's actually not true -- congenital deaf children average almost a standard dev below average on IQ tests. However, your overall point still stands, as non-deaf children of deaf parents do just fine.
The main problem area blocking the release is multi-monitor support. A regression there means it will break for some users, even though those who don't use this feature might have a huge improvement (such as mark did).
Excluding it from the desktop for one release is killing it. A big chunk of ubuntu's repository is now broken, resulting in a big "fuck you" from the users (including me) and no more donations...

Even if they ship X and Mir, people will just use X.
Hey Paul, I'm the founder of Beacon http://www.beaconreader.com - would be interested to hear your thoughts (if you have any) on the space now. Can I send you an email?
Self taught. No choice about that in 1967. No computers in schools, no such thing as a CS degree, and anyway for family reasons I had to drop out. By pure chance I got a job as a computer commissioning tech at a local computer manufacturer - Elliott Brothers Automation; my job was to take room sized discrete component mainframes from their hand-wired manufacturing stage and make them work so they could be shipped to their new owners (typically universities or research labs). First day on the job, 19 years old, they lead me to a work station, point at the 'scope, the Crown sized blueprints, and the machine, and say "make it work. See you at lunch". I did. Both. No idea how, pure babe in the woods, but turned out my mind just works that way. So after a few months, I had noticed they turned the reference machine off outside 9-5 work hours, and got permission to turn it back on for my own purposes. The rest is history.

I have been at this for over 45 years as a cross-disciplinary hardware and software designer ever since. Still techie, at 66 years old, still nicely gainfully employed, still young at heart (if with a few creaky bits now:). Still mostly self taught, still inventing stuff that did not exist before. Yes, along the way for my own satisfaction I got the B. Sc and most of an M. Sc, but neither were required by my employers. Also, as somebody already mentioned, I have been recruited to every change in my career, or founded start-ups (with funding based on my design abilities), by people who knew me. Other than that first chance, I have never got a job by submitting a resume. And even that first job was by referral from an interviewer for a different job, after we had chatted for a while. Every change always started with my phone ringing.

I do not attribute this career to inborn talent, although I certainly turned out to have some. I attribute it to wide eyed curiosity and a perpetual feeling of "what? you want to actually _pay_ me to do this?", and its concomitant continuous learning and inventing. And to nobody telling me what I wanted to do was impossible.
Current citizen, wife with dual citizenship. Long term we will probably end up in her country (an EU nation), we are already looking at strengthening some of those ties.

She had to divest some interests when she took up residence here, if we decide to go back over there (likely in the next 3-5 years), we will look carefully at whether or not staying in vested in the US makes sense. The US feels like it is trying to turn every benefit into something akin to a 401k -- HSA accounts, etc. Which isn't ideal, but they still aren't separating things from the employer based healthcare model...so in a sense many are getting the worst of both worlds.

Healthcare may actually be the motivating issue for us.
It is going to be an issue for everybody else because when things dont work as they should, and they wont because now there is two backends to support for the toolkits, it will be Wayland here and Mir there, completely useless for the user, but what will you say in the error message "Something stopped working, sorry?".

Just like alsa, oss, jack, esd and pulseaudio.

I never wanted to touch pulseaudio with a ten-foot pole, it is kept away from my systems in every form. Yet Ive seen apps complain about pulseaudio and have it in their settings by default, then not working and telling me to fix my pulseaudio installation.

There will be apps developed by Ubuntu for Mir that will just cause problems when others try to run them on Wayland.
It's not a conspiracy theory. It's an obvious inference from the data we have. They are building 'pattern-of-life' profiles of all of us.
Even if you hate it, a bit of feedback would be appreciated.
In a debate about how things work, "you're wrong because we know you're wrong" isn't a useful argument. As to comparison to other animals, we also know that there is a genetic component to being able to live under water, as fish can do this and humans can't, this doesn't mean some humans are better than others at living without air.
Childhood IQ tests get complicated by the fact that a lot of what you measure is which children hit growth spurts already, which come with attendant intellectual improvements.

But I have had a psychologist who specialized in the field say that the best predictor of adult IQ was receptive vocabulary. Meaning how many words does the child understand? Understanding words, even words you don't know how to use, predicts future intellectual development because it says who has the foundation.

Guess how you would build receptive vocabulary?
Pinterest Wins $7.2M and Injunction Against Cybersquatter
A little birdy informed me that SteamOS is based on Ubuntu, they didn't go into more details besides saying it was a dumb choice. I would assume its based on X.org since neither Wayland nor Mir are mature enough.
Nice example.

>>Many US progressives/lefties I've spoken with seem to react with suspicion and horror at the idea of being able to have the IRS estimate your taxes on your behalf

I felt the opposite when I first heard that US tax system was too complicated. What I know before about filing tax was simply 1) approve my employer's filing about my salary 2) declare child and donation. How complicated could that be?
"Elements of Style", in Principles of Composition #17: "Omit needless words".
It's not about velocity it's about rate of cars through a point per hour. If you have a mergepoint with 10 lanes. Each lane can support say 20 cars per minute. If you have 200 cars approaching the merge-point per minute the cars can travel effectively at the speed of their choice.

If you close one lane, reducing the capacity of the mergepoint to 180 cars per minute while 200 cars are approaching a queue will build. The speed with which the cars mass the mergepoint is not relevant because the rate of cars per lane per minute will stay basically at 20 cars/lane/min.

As to your point about all lanes slowing down - cars will always redistribute as you can imagine. People tend to merge left as there's an additional traffic stream merging on their right. The writer made points about the capacity of the mergepoint vs. the cars approaching- not individual lanes and speeds.
Cloud Benchmark Reports.  Best Performance vs Price
The U.S. greatly simplified its tax code in the late 1980s, in an era of divided government at that. Its complexity has increased since then as subsequent Congresses have tinkered with the tax code.
BloomReach - http://bloomreach.com/careers

Mountain View, California

H1B, Intern, Full-time are all welcome

BloomReach is a small, fast-growing startup with offices in Mountain View, CA and Bangalore, India, and we’re tackling one of the Internet’s most fundamental problems: helping leading online businesses get their high quality and relevant content found by their consumers, when and where they want it.

BloomReach’s big data applications and technology drive revenue by consuming web wide and site data to interpret consumer demand and deliver relevant user experiences on any marketing channel.

We have open positions in Data Science, Engineering, Sales, Product and Engagement Management, and Human Resources. If you don't find a position that interests you, fill out a generic application and let us know what you want to work on- we're just looking for smart, talented people to help us continue making BloomReach an amazing place to work.

For engineering positions, if you can also send at least one cool piece of code, or a link to something you’ve built, or a hack that you’re proud of, we’d love to see it!
Have YouTube's copyright bots met their match?
And how is scanning your email different from scanning your facebook posts both private and public. If the plaintiff wins, bye bye advertising supported services.
I do most of my small transactions in cash. Is this in any way unusual? Is this American thing?
The difference being that humans aren't descended from fish, but are descended from apes. We know that some kind of incremental genetic "improvement" to our intelligence must have evolved and then become universal throughout the populations that speciated to become modern humans.
I signed up for it. I thought about joining nReduce when it was still new but at the time I didn't have an idea... and now they're gone. I would be willing to try this out now.
Actually, usually it is organizations on both sides of the agreement. At least here in .se.

Originally the rules originated in long term agreement between employer organizations and unions, and was later codified into law. And even if union memberships are way down from what they used to be, their agreements are seen as guiding lines for how other working agreements are made.
Can't we turn the tables on them if we know what's going on?

1) Take out life insurance policy.

2) Pay with credit card at McDonald's and the bar.

3) Get a bunch of speeding tickets.

4) Sell policy to a data mining firm that hopes I die soon.

5) Profit!
So what if it's not for people with TMJ? There are enough people out there without TMJ.

I see this category of criticism often, but never understand it. Sure, athletic sneakers aren't for people who have no feet. Nike still makes money.
What does it mean to extract the content?

To filter spam, you need to make enough sense of the email to identify it as spammy, according to some algorithm. To serve an ad, you need to make enough sense of the email to indicate it's about something one or more of your advertisers cares about. I can't think of a way to distinguish between the spam robot's access vs the ad robot's.
Link to paper: http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/451.pdf
a consistent online profile appearing like a real life persona might be of value. But she was to profilic for witness protection.. is it really just a sport for stacey?
It's encouraging to hear this can work. Of course that guy was extremely fortunate to be making something everyone was interested in, so it's still a risk (but then again: what isn't?).
Seeking Work -

Partial Stack Curmudgeon
- I can administer and scale most modern day languages
- I prefer dealing with PHP, Python, C/C++, Erlang, etc
- Postgres, MySQL - I've spent many years in
- NoSQL - a mix of pragmatic experience, experimentation, and the lil.
- Yes, I've done NodeJS, I don't feel anymore rockstar or badass, it has it's place
- I've built mobile based projects up through and including systems scaling to thousands and millions, my strengths are still more in the back end.
- Security? I have code in the Firefox security libraries from a prior life, I've integrated with banks using SAML (it hurt), I'm way conservative on systems, but you will need to convince me if we decide to pursue things like mutual/client auth.
- I'm looking to build up a contract relationship or two that will provide fulltime work to shed some current obligations.

I'm open to something fulltime that borders on technical cofounder, but you really should be technical.

I know Linux, FreeBSD, Windows (in many bad forms), OSX/iOS, Java, C/C++, etc.

If there is no match or I can't be beneficial, I'm upfront about that.