skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yesterday I got an error 'error: tar archive is compressed. Aborting' or something along those lines. When reading a file it might detect it because of the filename, but with stdin you need to specify the flag it seems.
Google’s Role In Child Pornography Arrest Raises Privacy Concerns
If its an exponential decay process, as it supposedly is, then its more of a statistical game where the median helix would have cracked into 1 base pair at 6.8Myr.

That would really suck if you only had one single helix to work with. However I'd think theoretically given an infinite amount of genetic data (unlikely) you could analyze every molecule in the sample separately and then put it back together.

There's a radiation analogy... if you've got a speck of Co-60 of a certain almost infinitely small size, its not too hard to do the math to prove that after 1M years theres less than one atom left of Co-60. Say you want a 1 Kg pile of Co-60 thats 1M years old. Yes, indeed, it is very true that if you start with exactly and only one speck of Co-60 the odds exceed 50% chance that there will be less than one atom left. The solution is simple, start with a bigger piece than an infinitely small speck and use a lot more than one speck.

This isn't a silver bullet, being exponential, if I were not so lazy I could work out that if you wanted the DNA from the first known life on the planet, you'd need a multiple of the entire mass of the universe as a starting sample size or something crazy like that.

Just saying if you want 6.80001 Myr DNA its not impossible its just going to be a huge expensive PITA compared to existing techniques for stuff merely 100 years old.

The guy who divided 6.8e6/521 I think is trying to tell you how many base pairs long an average DNA helix probably would be, I think, sorta? So the average 1/2 life of a base pair is 521 years, and half of an entire helix is 6.8M years.
I have recently come across a free site builder called webzai.com, that lets you design responsive websites from scratch without writing one line of code.

www.webzai.com

It has a bit of a learning curve to it but once you get the hang of it it’s great.
If only USPTO would include such logic in their patent reviews before passing those patents.

A good portion of such patents could've been banned with the new bill against patent trolls, if only companies like Microsoft and IBM wouldn't have lobbied so hard against such reform.
Or fio. https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/442451-inspecting-disk...
Yes, something like that. At least I am not alone. PhDs are a dime a dozen. Even friends with programming skills can't find jobs...
Silly me, I thought "Big Tech" was a single company name due to being capitalized. Guess I won't learn about a new GH usage today...
Point taken, but in spite of their aspirations, they are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Thank goodness.
What I'm wondering is what the vertical axis is intended to represent.
Congrats !

Do you know the job description ? On what subject will you work ?
I would suggest to be fluent in C#, C++ and the .NET framwork.
Btw: How did MS make you an offer ? You applied or they came for you ?
The Helicos stuff would have to be pretty old, they've been effectively out of business for some time (having filed for bankruptcy in 2012).

The paper suggests they mostly used Illumina, with one guy using Helicos:

"J.S. did ancient and modern DNA extractions and constructed Illumina DNA libraries for shotgun sequencing"..."X.W. did Illumina libraries on donkey extracts"..."A.S.-O. performed Illumina sequencing for the Middle Pleistocene".."Ji.M. and X.W. performed Illumina sequencing for the Middle Pleistocene and the donkey genomes at BGI".."J.F.T. headed true Single DNA Molecule Sequencing of the Middle Pleistocene genome"

It's worth noting that while Illumina sequencing isn't true single molecule, you are getting a read signal from a single fragment of DNA.
I took care to read the fine submitted article and then share it among Facebook friends of mine (who include psychologists who study human behavior genetics and neuroscientists) before commenting here. Two things come to mind after reading the comments posted earlier here.

1) Most people who have read about genetic influences on human behavior have not read the masters, but rather their disciples. The masters of behavior genetics research take care to write about the concept of "reaction range," the variety of possible behavior patterns that MIGHT arise from an individual with a given genotype under differing environmental influences. It is apparent that the reaction range for many human behaviors is very broad even if genotype is fixed.[1]

2) Simply adding some brain-scan data to some hypothesis pulled out of a hat will make even the most wild and crazy hypothesis more plausible to lay readers. Neuroscience is hard, and so far there are not a lot of neuroscience conclusions about human behavior that are well replicated and well backed up by theory.[2]

[1] The review article Johnson, W. (2010). Understanding the Genetics of Intelligence: Can Height Help? Can Corn Oil?. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 177-182

http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/...

looks at some famous genetic experiments to show how little is explained by gene frequencies even in thoroughly studied populations defined by artificial selection.

"Together, however, the developmental natures of GCA [general cognitive ability] and height, the likely influences of gene-environment correlations and interactions on their developmental processes, and the potential for genetic background and environmental circumstances to release previously unexpressed genetic variation suggest that very different combinations of genes may produce identical IQs or heights or levels of any other psychological trait. And the same genes may produce very different IQs and heights against different genetic backgrounds and in different environmental circumstances. This would be especially the case if height and GCA and other psychological traits are only single facets of multifaceted traits actually under more systematic genetic regulation, such as overall body size and balance between processing capacity and stimulus reactivity. Genetic influences on individual differences in psychological characteristics are real and important but are unlikely to be straightforward and deterministic. We will understand them best through investigation of their manifestation in biological and social developmental processes."

[2] The book Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience by Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld

http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless-...

explains the gaps in current knowledge about neuroscience of human behavior and why a few brain scans in a few subjects don't tell us much about brain function before other study methods are applied to the problem.
Amazon reviews from the PS4 and Xbox One next-gen console wars
Liquid mercury is quite boringly safe. There are a bunch of entertainingly toxic (and mobile) compounds, though.
> Meanwhile, back in a free society, people are allowed to freely associate with whoever they choose even if we disagree with their opinions.

BS. We are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of several criteria. Government agencies certainly cannot refuse service on arbitrary criteria, and minority groups throughout history have had to resort to the law due to the fact that oppressive majorities might be unfairly boycotting them.

There is no such thing as a "free society"; there are societies with different values and with different criteria as to who are fairly and unfairly victimized.

For the record, in most civilized countries at-will employment where you can be fired on the spot without compensation for no justification is considered to be a gross undermining of worker's rights.
> And yes, fine, whatever, you can say "toldya so" all you like when Bitcoin fulfills your fantastic greed

A moral hedge - I like it!
Palava: WebRTC video conferences, LGPLv3
Seal plays with hat at zoo
At zoo in DC seal playing with people tossing hat back and forth..
>> But I do find it entertaining that you believe there are no Italian misogynists that would use nude photos or videos against a woman. It's not naive at all. :)

Who said that? Certainly not me. I wonder where you read that?

I said they would find it hard for slut shaming to work to the same extent - i.e. someone's life ruined over a stolen picture.
In Shapiro's case I don't think that's necessarily true. "She’s a former MIT professor, a venture consultant for the Hillcrest Group, and a published author for the Harvard Business Review." (http://pandodaily.com/2013/07/26/how-to-slaughter-a-patent-t...)
It doesn't explicitly say if you are the originator vs just some node on the way.

If you run a tor relay you can hide your own traffic in the noise.
> As to psychopathy, the linked article says it all -- a researcher finds out he's a dangerous person by reading a brain scan, with no other supporting evidence and copious contraindications.

Pretty much no, that's not what the article says at all. He didn't find he's dangerous, he found out his brain is lacking in capacity for "empathy, morality and self-control" (which is what he self-observed in the first place). These traits are central to psychopaths, but that does not mean a person with such traits is necessarily violent or actually doing anything overtly anti-social. And that's what the article actually says and tries to explain. A brain scan which shows dysfunction in ventromedial frontal cortex does not mean you're looking at a brain of an anti-social maniac, it's somewhat more nuanced.

EDIT: I forgot to mention a very relevant finding: it has been shown that intelligence has a non linear and interesting interaction with psychopathic personality traits. Basically, very high level intelligence can and does act like a defensive factor, extremely intelligent people with such traits are able to compensate the lack of empathy, self-control etc. (the relation is not so simple with lover levels of intelligence, as I said it's not linear). I wish I could give you some reference, but ATM I don't have anything in English at hand, sorry.
He's putting himself on my blacklist by using OnSwipe. How is that shit not dead yet?
http://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/root/j...
In addition to contacternst I would say that you maybe that thinking freelancing to small organization and some other thing like that. Feel free to share your personal portfolio I'll go visit it and give you my opinion ;)
Maybe I'm not opened minded enough, but I just don't believe the future is ARM on the desktop/server. I believe the future is x86 on the phone. I feel like it's less time until Intel gets the power correct as opposed to ARM getting the speed.
Anyone know where I can get one of those bitcoin keychains in the picture? :)

Edit: Found it, http://bkeychain.com/buy.html ($12??)
Public perception is influenced by the first reviews published on a new product. If you give a few known friendly writers early access, there will be a few days of nothing but positive reporting. Mainstream media will then pick this up as "overwhelmingly positive" response to the new thing.

Of course Apple has the right to behave like this. Nevertheless, it's good for consumers to know that the early reviews are carefully shaped, so if you want a balanced picture, you need to wait until after the public release.
Tech-wise, this would imply using a secondary ID to uniquely identify their users. A simple fix, yes, just that it's often a better way to rely on a third-party's ID when you use said third-party's auth system.
I remember Engadget being "asked" to stop covering jailbreak-requiring iPhone apps.
As much as we like to think cities are 'planned' for this type of things, they're not, and humans can find patterns in anything. Cities form the way they do through many drivers, and 'planning for social cohesion' is a minute one - if it even exists.
Pros and cons of media leaks
Eileen, who has published books among other things, now has to explain to anyone who googles her why the first result is an article calling her a troll. That's not just embarrassing, it's financially damaging.
This is a collection of quick shell recipes, so in that context it's perfectly acceptable. Besides, there are some environments where you can't just install packages willy-nilly, even if they're present on the repositories.
Korea Announces Favorable Tax Policy for BTC
>> I tend to be on the opinion that all forms of art are in the public domain by default, unless explicitely stated. So, there would be no breach of copyright here.

This is factually incorrect.

There is copyright on any and all creations unless explicitly licensed otherwise. This is under the Berne convention. In the US you can register copyrighted works but only to access the higher punitive damages for infringement. It became the law in the US that all works were auto-copyrighted when the Berne convention was signed into law.

>> Copyrights have nothing to do here.

They do, it's stolen* works that are not licensed to the site, and as the escalation of penalties under copyright law has been so huge recently, it may be the best weapon to take these people down.

*(I don't usually like the use of the word "steal" or "stolen" in conjunction with copyright, but where it involves actually breaking in to people's mail accounts and taking things I don't necessarily think it's inaccurate)
Counterexample, Scheelium lightbulbs (aka wolfram aka tungsten).

There is no real discoverer. Its like crediting Columbus with discovering America? Or Al Gore with inventing the internet?

Wolfram story is probably a decent analogy. Some Swede described an ore in a book and named it after himself, then a sample of his ore that was contaminated with wolframite (named by german Agricola, yes, by that famous Agricola) had an acid extraction run on it, that resulted in what we'd now call impure raw tungstic acid. A lot of people thought that acid was pretty interesting but it took some Spanish dudes to reduce the acid to a completely worthless metal. Then two centuries later one American dude came up with a way of purification and heat treatment such that it finally made a decent wire for electric light bulb (no, not the guy you're thinking of, a plant scale engineer decades after the inventor) and then General Electric (at that time an American company unlike now) tried to patent the whole process. Such that in the 1920s, or whatever it was, you'd have a chemical element where its only industrial production was patented, which sounds crazy in 2013 but wasn't all that unusual about a century ago. And that patent got overturned if I recall correctly (no I'm not that old, just from memory)

The point of this ramble about Schelium metal lightbulbs is given some research there IS NO DISCOVERER. Other than the victor writes the histories and such, which is trivially interesting from a sociological perspective but has no actual hard science meaning.
A bunch of tablets are out with the new chips, I'm typing this on a Dell Venue 8 Pro. Acer or ASUS have a 10" model with a keyboard dock to make a proper clamshell.
I agree. It helped me when I was a bit rusty with data structures and was looking for a new job recently. And if you can try and re-implement the data structures in a different way. For example, the JDK HashMap uses chaining so try and build an open addressing one. Not only does it teach you about data structures themselves but it gets you practicing coding very quickly for these toy coding problems that get thrown at you during interviews.
Bitcoins: a dangerous idea worthy of being taken seriously.
thanks for this. will be happy to hear your thoughts!
On Code academy, Code school and baby steps.
Reminds me of when CNET was blacklisted by Google for publishing Schmidt's personal info that was available on Google searches after he downplayed privacy.

http://boingboing.net/2009/12/09/google-ceo-says-priv.html
"Just saying if you want 6.80001 Myr DNA its not impossible its just going to be a huge expensive PITA compared to existing techniques for stuff merely 100 years old."

That's kind of an interesting problem. I wonder how much material you'd need to get decent coverage of a averaged sized organism (few gigabases) given the decay rates they calculated.
Hackers and Firefighters
The shared genius of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs
Every time I look up one of USPTO workers involved, their online profiles (FB, etc.) show how utterly unqualified they are to be involved in the patent process.

Doesn't that reflect more on whoever hired them?

I've also heard that the patent office doesn't care about the quality of patents so much as (1) processing applications cheaply and (2) not getting sued for denying questionable applications. Which again would reflect on the top-level people rather than on the individual patent examiners constrained by those policies.
Google and Apple Alums Invent Adorable Robots That Teach Kids to Code
Companies do maintain black lists in the same way that Hollywood did in response to McCarthy and there is a small industry of "research" to did out info on peoples political and other activities eg raising H&S issues

The construction industry has been doing this for decades in the UK and I bet companies like walmart do it in the USA as well.

If you dont see the problem you need to read up on the industrial history of the USA
Well to be fair, I used to make small talk with taxi drivers, but when I noticed a sizable portion of those talks devolve into idiotic racist rambling I just stopped. Sorry to those who aren't stupid. (I'm a white male so maybe they just thought I'd be receptive to their 'the foreigners are taking our jobs' (I use the word 'foreigners' here where in reality they mostly used other words unsuitable for polite company) complaints because I tried to start some friendly chatter about their job or the weather or what was in the newspaper that morning?)

Look, I'm not advocating social stratification, but I understand the drivers that cause it, and 'insecurity' or 'they think they're better' are just a small portion of them.
> What is ARM?
> An advanced RISC machine (ARM) server employs small,
> low-power ARM processors, typically deployed as
> systems on a chip (SoC) to reduce space, power consumption
> and cost.

This looks like a perfect example of the kind of violation a trademark owner is required to pursue to protect the trademark: Dell uses "ARM server" here to mean "a server that is RISC-based and advanced" rather than "a server [based on tech] of the brand ARM from ARM Ltd."
It is a problem - just more global. With PR moving into more and more orwellian grounds there should indeed be widespread public education on their practices and how to avoid/protect from them.

And with the crackdown on fake/paid/influenced reviews, shills and other similar stuff seems the society is waking up.

While I strongly condemn limiting the freedom of speech I do think that there should be detailed disclosures on what kind of stuff the person doing the review is getting. And yes early access should be on that list.

Transparency is a potent tool.
Entrepreneurs Can Revitalize The Image Of Business
Same for me here ! :)
Well, there's always intel. Don't count them out yet, they won't sit on their hands and smile as ARM eats their lunch. I guess, the backlash will come soon.
> They can even develop their own rational morality, arguably in many ways better than the instinctive emotional morality most people have.

One of the striking things about psychopaths, and I'm talking about the obvious anti-social types, not the ones like Fallon from the article, is how they are able to talk and abstractly reason about morality. Based on words alone, they can often be judged as shining examples of virtue. The interesting thing about it is that they're not lying (no evidence that they do) or trying to deceive (well, it certainly depends on the situation, of course they won't have problems deceiving people when needed). They just can't relate on a fundamental level to rational analysis they are able to make. It is in fact the absence of emotional component in moral reasoning, which neurotypical people have, that leads them to behave in ways opposite of their stated abstract moral standards.
You're right, thanks for calling me out. I thought about deleting the comment. I was just complaining...usually, I can restrain myself, this time, I slipped.
'He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.'
- George Orwell.
I, for one, generally like to pretend that none of Microsoft's ad campaigns actually exists.

My suspicion is that Microsoft's current spate of negative advertising can be traced directly back to the Mac vs PC ads of a few years ago. These happened to coincide with a remarkable rampup in the popularity of Apple's PCs, and that cannot have gone unnoticed at the C-levels. Whether or not the ads were actually a driving factor in the change is, of course, hard to say -- but they certainly didn't seem to discourage anyone from buying Apple.

What the decision-makers seem to have missed, though, was that 1) the ads themselves were gentle and somewhat charming (or at least John Hodgman helped make them that way) and 2) although these things were largely exaggerated for comic effect, they often targeted real pain points that consumers actually had with Windows.

Of course, in implicitly painting Microsoft as buffoonish and perhaps even incompetent, I think these ads generated more rage in the boardroom than they would have if they'd been merely full-on attack ads in the style of "Scroogled".
The vapor pressure goes up surprisingly fast with temp, such that a contaminated cold room temp in the winter might be "eh" but it could get bad on a hot sunny summer day. Modern home insulation probably doesn't help much.

Another comment is sulfur is cheap and widely available at garden stores etc and cinnabar toxicity is greatly exaggerated, because historically anyone who mined it, smelted it, and the smelting is a very effective way to get killed just by being nearby. I wouldn't eat it intentionally, etc, but after sulfur neutralization its mostly harmless. Its a much lower vapor pressure and relatively stable compound compared to elemental Hg.

And it'll amalgamate with gold jewelry, if I recall. I'm old enough to have played with Hg bare handed as a kid. Its kind of like gunpowder, respect it and you'll be safe, make a habit in your life of doing dumb things and nothing is ever safe.
Lack of pointers in C++ has been the bane of my C++ experience.
Nice addendum.

"8." is probably the hardest thing to explain to someone who hasn't been there.
If you know anything about big companies and PR, you would know that much of what he says is true. They do indeed monitor what various media outlets say and create an "enemies list" that will be starved.

Even big and influential media may not escape. Apple doesn't need to cooperate with the normal reporters on the New York Times who ask hard questions about conditions in Chinese factories, they just need to court David Pogue.
Are these really better per watt at serving content?

I'm all for x86/intel competition but I don't see this as real savings yet?
Just use dtrx (do the right extraction) via `pip install dtrx`. Makes life much easier.
Concept Checking in C++11
Why do you think the comparison to McCarthyism is incorrect or inappropriate, let alone laughable? Please note that OP didn't say that Apple's blacklist makes it just as bad as HUAC or Uncle Joe.