skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
the point is that the number of jobs themselves do not dimish

I agree there. Think of the jobs that have been lost over the years as stores have closed due to competition from the internet. During my lifetime, I've seen independent bookstores merge and disappear, and even the mega-chains go away (e.g. Borders). Music stores - gone (Tower Records, Wherehouse, Sam Goody). Video rental - gone (Blockbuser). Big box electronics - going (Circuit City, Good Guys, Tweeter).

Despite all of this, unemployment stayed relatively constant, aside from the spike during the recent economic downturn (and these jobs were not lost as a result of automation).
Whatever the data/metric is, people will pander to it or game it until it is meaningless. Data itself is easier to perlustrate in the future to see different interpretations, but usually the C-suite will see what they want to see and be told what they want to hear.
Individuals do both, yes, but disagreeing that there are in fact camps is something else.
In case anyone else is as daft as I was, this will not work for everyone in an everybody-wears-headphones environment.
> So if you think my thought experiment can come to pass - we need to be very concerned.

We only need to be concerned if we make the assumption that societal expectations won't adjust as well. "Hard work" is seen as a virtue; someone who takes government assistance is pitied at best, considered "parasitic" at worst.

If we take those views into your world it will be a disaster. But instead the real question should be "why does everyone need to have a job?" If we provide for the needs of people displaced by the new machines, we'd free people up to pursue arts, philosophy, or even simple leisure. We'd be living in Bertrand Russell's paradise of 'idleness'.
This would imply you could make floor to chest height walls of sheetrock and studs even cheaper than cubes. I'm not seeing it.

There is a long term savings in that reorgs of cubes means a couple hours for a couple guys with screwdrivers instead of week or so of carpenters / electricians / painters.
And sweet.js macros can be used to implement the type system of your choice in otherwise stock Javascript. (For that matter, you could un-overload the + operator so that it only works with numbers, and invent a . operator to do string concatenation.)

I can see a potential argument that doing type checking via macros costs more than precompilation in efficiency terms, but on the other hand, that's not necessarily so. How does TypeScript do type checking for non-constant values? That is, if I define function foo(bar: string) in a TypeScript library, then compile it, load the library in a Javascript interpreter, and call foo(Integer.parseInt("42")), what happens? I'm guessing that either foo() misbehaves, or that foo() throws an exception.

In the former case, there is no benefit to TypeScript because your type annotations are evanescent and misleading -- you can't rely on them, so you either have to write fences around input values just like you would without them, or risk your code misbehaving because it's written to rely on unreliable type annotations.

In the latter case, TypeScript is adding those fences automatically, so that a function which expects an integer argument can check whether it actually got one and fail if it didn't. That's basically what a macro system implementing type checking would do, too, and it seems to me that in both cases optimization would be merely an implementation detail.
Cheap Things to Do In Cancun
Ask “Why me?” instead of “Why me?”
This is bad news (despite being a BMW owner)

In future driving will no longer be fun, if you want to drive "non-automated" car or disable "auto-pilot" your insurance company will automatically jack up your premium, since they would consider self driving cars "safer"
>> Are schools really less "strict" than before? Does a teacher really have less control of their classroom than today?

In the USA, teachers used to be able to hit students, about 30 years ago. Things have changed quite a bit.
Being in a dominant position increases testosterone production, which then promotes a feeling of well-being and energy.

It literally feels good to keep other people down.
None of those are finished yet I think? DFA has its backer release next week, Torment seems to be a long ways away. Dunno about Wasteland as I didn't back that one.

Everything on the list is in past tense; this happened, this got made, this won awards. These are things that HAPPENED because of Kickstarter, not things that are still on their way to happening.
Amazon "bar raisers" hiring article in the WSJ yesterday. Bezos doesn't own it yet to my knowledge.
Looks very cool. Is this only for "virtual" products or physical goods as well?
I've worked at Amazon, both in the warehouse management division as well as AWS, and the whole "bar raiser" phenomenon is mostly just marketing fluff. There are a handful of engineers who don't mind interviewing (or at least hate it less than most), and they get picked often to be part of the interview circuit. After some number of interviews, you are considered one of the mystical "bar raisers". However, in my experience, they are not any different from other interviewers. More experienced sure, but the difficulty of questions is highly variable, and honestly there isn't much culture at Amazon to worry about culture fit.
American English speaker here. I've said "themselves" in this context my entire life, and have only ever heard this word from my peers.

I have never heard anyone say "themself" or "theirself" and both words sound incredibly awkward to me.
> that is, the forward-slash was part of the filename, not the path...which I didn't even know was possible on any platform

Nor did I. Which platform?
The train example is a pretty bad one, I'm the first in four generations not to work for the local railroad and five union dudes on a train crew pretty much went away in the 1970s. You do typically have two guys and you really need two for safety as sometimes you need human eyes looking out both windows at once (freight trains have poor visibility compared to trucks).

A freight train with one dude strikes me as unlikely. The few single person trains out there have excellent visibility for the one driver. So you'd have an interesting capital expense if you tried that with freight trains. I do know some small switcher locos run single person but thats in a barb-wired switchyard well away from the general public. So you'd "have to" eliminate all grade crossings or something, another big expense.
On the referenced pdf[1], there are two professions related to us:

130 0.042 Software Developers, Applications

293 0.48 Computer Programmer

The former has 4% probability to lose to automation, while the later is 48%. What is the difference between the two?

[1] http://www.futuretech.ox.ac.uk/sites/futuretech.ox.ac.uk/fil...
I've only glanced at the paper, but it looks to me as if he's using it in another perfectly usual way, namely referring to situations where the wavefunction and/or the Hilbert space it lives in can be written exactly or approximately as a product over simpler things. There's nothing wrong with that.
That's not an answer. It's a human reaction, but there is no vetting or 'due process'. For example, what about people who impersonate/hijack email addresses, etc? Those people get caught in the maelstrom while totally innocent.

It's a mob reaction. I don't know what the answer is, but that's not it.
... There's lots of stuff about it on the website

http://www.chris-granger.com/lighttable/
Oh, okay. Well that makes sense then. Thanks for the explanation.
Same here; Chrome@Mavericks.

If you check the JS console log, you'll see that this is most probably caused by calling the Mixpanel (analytics/tracking script) track method in slideshow.js (line 12), which triggers an error because Mixpanel is not loaded.

Here's the error: 'Uncaught ReferenceError: mixpanel is not defined'.
> Unfortunately it's also the most expensive solution.

Is it more or less expensive than CEO bonuses? Serious question.
Unfortunately this contribution is inhibited from being significant in value by the fact that TypeScript doesn't support full gradual typing [0] and has an intentionally unsound type system [1].

[0] http://siek.blogspot.com/2012/10/is-typescript-gradually-typ...

[1] https://typescript.codeplex.com/discussions/428572
This argument is a bit of a fallacy. See the following (schematic) graph, which illustrates the fallacy:

http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/human_vs_machine_prog...
If you're interested in this, get ahold of us and I'm sure we can work something out. The plan was always to do a dual licensing scheme to enable exactly what you're talking about.
"As more jobs are getting automated, it opens up "new" job opportunities in new fields that are coming up."

That's what I've been taught in school, but I'm not sure it's that simple. For one thing, I would say the jobs getting automated are less qualified, manual jobs. And new jobs opening up require more skills. But can we expect everyone to perform a highly skilled or intellectual job?

It seems to me that either we have to accept that a proportion of the population doesn't work, or we have subsidy manual jobs to compete with developing countries with cheap labor.

Either way, the ones benefiting from automation have to pay for the unskilled to survive.
Please explain this view. I fail to see how a robotics competition means federal recruiting.
Great work dude. Seems interesting idea.
Can you compare it to any of the other places you've worked to give some perspective to your comparison? Like "isn't much culture" compared to working at IBM or "isn't much culture" compared to Google/Zappos/RedGate?
I occasionally thank God that my office is a cubicle-free (but walled) environment. My workplace is in a former mansion converted into office space, and I have 2 other programmers in the room with me; likewise with the designers. We may or may not be all working on the same thing. Sometimes discussion/clarification on some topic helps everyone, otherwise we keep quiet, have a door, thermostat, and light switch.

At my first job, I remember setting an ultimatum on waiting for 3 conversations (DBAs, team lead, QA) around me to end so I would have some silence. The line was crossed, so I asked my manager and thankfully, he let me work from home for the rest of the day, and I got all assignments done that day.
Well, that's the trick. (Serial procrastinator here. Hello!) You can't think of a large project as a large project. Otherwise you'll never get it done. It's impossible by definition, because a larger project is a composite of a number of smaller tasks. So sometimes you end up having to trick yourself with "fix a typo" or "change this class name" or w/e. It has to be small and stupid enough that the activation cost is as low as possible.

Easier said than done, of course. Did I mention I'm procrastinating?
I think you misunderstood. I'm not objecting to the idea that mind is ultimately made of matter. I'm objecting to labeling it as a "state of matter", which has an entirely different meaning. (It does NOT mean "here's a bunch of matter that interacts in an interesting way.") The paper's abstract even explicitly states:

> We explore five basic principles that may distinguish conscious matter from other physical systems such as solids, liquids and gases: ...

So it seems clear that the author argues "being conscious" is parallel to "being liquid", but this better have a really solid (no pun intended) justification.
New computer security system: owning a dog
In lew of work, the "quit-your-job" app toys around with the idea of quitting without actually following through. Great idea for corporate zombies.
In that case, I'm sure not hoping for them to win. Nokia hardware has always been my favorite.
I just think it's not as simple as that. I may very well not be able to distinguish the difference between electrode-stimulation and actual-cake-in-my-mouth. What I'm trying to say is that I don't believe that even an exhaustive list of physical information about my brain includes "what it is like" for me to have the experience qua experience.
> On the phone front, LG showed off its entry level phone, the Fireweb

Interesting, given that LG just announced WebOs on their TVs:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-01-06/lg-unveils-inter...
Has anyone tried using this around their dogs?

I don't want to dos my puppy. :(
Some recent SPDYv3 vs HTTPS performance numbers from various Google properties: http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/making-web-faster-with-spdy...
The Secret Life of San Francisco Street Performers
JPMorgan Pays for Shorting Madoff Without Telling Anyone
> Physical property also has the saying "possession is nine tenths of the law".

Which saying is (a) not accurate of physical property, and (b) insofar as it does relate to real legal principles applicable to physical property, those principles are also applicable to intangible personal property.

Really, its more about a presumption against proprietary rights -- as property is the right to exclude others, if ownership can't be proven, no one can be excluded, and whoever is taking an action which would be excludable by another's ownership is safe, even if they cannot prove that they are the owner who would have the right to exclude others.
What happens if they find you have stuff that you have not delcared? I know for cheap items they charge you the tax or trash them. For several thousand dollars worth of equiptment though, they might not be so nice...
I was reading about this yesterday in Ray Kurzweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines".
"With a word, they can veto any candidate, even if their expertise is in an area that has nothing to do with the prospective employee's."

Ah good, giving some extreme power to someone otherwise completely un-involved in the hiring process. Why should Rachel in accounting get to veto Sara as an engineer?

"Sailesh Rachabathuni, who developed software for Kindle devices before leaving Amazon in 2012, says he once vetoed a candidate for a programming job because the candidate didn't know much about a specific programming language, a detail others missed."

Great! A game of software trivia! Could be relevant, could just be this person being a douche, hard to say.
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe
ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started

Anyone else got this?
More terrible than killing someone:

Spending more money to do it.
I thought it was a pain in the ass until I realized golang really does have a sort of dynamic parameter:

func test(myVar interface{})

will accept any type at all. You can then use Go's type switch or a call to reflect.TypeOf() to invoke different behavior based on the parameter's type. To my way of thinking, it's pretty simple.
Artisan economy? But it can't be monetarily based because only the few remaining capital owners and their very few labor jobs will have all the money.

My artisan economy I mean handmade paintings, handmade food, plays with actors instead of CGI movies, musicians, bars...
In future driving will no longer be fun

It's funny seeing BMW try to be a forerunner in this space, after all of their "BMW: The Ultimate Driving Machine" ad campaigns. They were one of the few car makers that actually spoke of driving fun! (Or, well, driving pleasure)
0_o Why don't we work on self-driving cars that drive correctly, first? Then the "HERP-DERP, I'MMA DRIVIN' SIDEWAYS!" enthusiasts can work on their own cars (hopefully on their own closed tracks and roads).
> For some reason most people throw out principles we follow in other languages such as... composability just for SQL

This is because the most common API for accessing databases is wrong and doesn't support composition.

Imagine designing a general-purpose, rich API that has only one method. The method takes one giant string argument. Insane? Absolutely.

SQL is actually awesome and amazing, but many programmers hate it because their API for accessing it is horribly broken. The whole point of relational algebra is that it's... an algebra. None of which is usefully exposed if you're just mashing strings of SQL together.
Three-dimensional mid-air acoustic manipulations
Why do so many force the idea of taking on a co-founder?
The number of jobs do diminish. There may one day be a point where all jobs are automated. No human being will need to have a job.
I agree with this. Not sure how viable, but it'd be nice to see some kind of federal program which allowed for a 5-year transition program for people where their industries collapse precipitously (by some definition) and are guaranteed 100% their wages but must study/prepare for a new career.

Not sure how to avoid the occasional dilly-dallier who thought they'd make a good chef, but maybe we'd just have to put up with that fact.
The problem is that society's support system is nearly non-existent. If people have to do less work to create the same product, they should be awarded with more time away from work to enjoy their life. But without some ownership over the products of one's own labor, this is not an option. Rather than having a system where technology improves the lifestyle of the middle class, our status quo is a system where technology battles against the worker and puts her at risk of poverty.
Intel Chips Timeline
Those are all very decent options as well. The better companies I've worked at understand that programming is neither 100% solo work or 100% collaboration, and trust me to chose accordingly. This means some days I'd come in to work and spend time planning/brainstorming with the team, and other times I wouldn't come in at all because I was grinding away.

Thinking back, those were also the companies that didn't force me into a giant open floor plan with a ton of other people... the ones that did tended to be much more focused around "cars in the parking lot by 8:30, butts in the chairs until 5".

Open floor plan as predictor of quality?
Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo all provide a desktop and two monitors (or one 30" one), or did the last time I worked for or interviewed at these companies. They might also provide laptops, but they aren't the primary device for dev work. I seem to recall the same for Amazon, but am not certain.

I actually don't understand this belief that a laptop should be the primary device given the body of research that shows the usefulness of multiple large monitors (unless you're just docking the laptop).
Is the cost to society (in lives lost) worth the cost to individual enjoyment?
Disagree. Driving will now have increased insurance prices associated with increased risk. The roads will be safer.
Ray Kurzweil talks about this in "The Age of Spiritual Machines". It probably comes down to human morality (as with just about everything) with regards to whether this singularity is a good thing or a bad thing.
But if the way you're doing it causes a high dropout rate, then you're not giving them "the fundamental understanding of programming" very well, are you? (Unless you're going to be snobbish and say that "only the few can learn this" - but that's a pretty ugly snobbery, especially if it's caused by you choosing an inaccessible teaching approach.)
Google Releases Branding Guidelines For Glass
I'm not super into the idea of code running on code because I likes it as simple as I can gets it. But, I know this notion is popular with lispers so I get it.
Dominance.

If the higher-ups have their own offices, whereas the plebes are amassed in the sweatshop, it gives the former a sense of dominance. It increases testosterone production, which makes them feel better, stronger, more energetic.

It's very hard to change something in a place if it makes the decision-makers feel really good.

"Rational actors" my ass. We are all a bunch of chimpanzees.
> That's what I've been taught in school, but I'm not sure it's that simple. For one thing, I would say the jobs getting automated are less qualified, manual jobs. And new jobs opening up require more skills. But can we expect everyone to perform a highly skilled or intellectual job?

More importantly, if we were replacing less-skilled jobs that are being automated with more-skilled, higher-paying jobs at a 1:1 ratio, automation would be driving up production costs rather than controlling them, and there'd be no motivation to do it.
Only if you have a laptop that's beefy enough to replace a desktop and you also have monitors to connect it to when you're at work. A single 13" screen is decidedly nonoptimal.
Going a little too far. Just ask to install a TV. After all, noise and distraction are supposed to be good, right?
Twitter Co-Founder Releases Social-Search App Jelly
It's a catch-22. You can't have content without creators, and if the content gets so bad that no one creates anymore, then you have no new content, which means you get more creators. It's an oscillation.
Did you had a look at [gorillascript](http://ckknight.github.io/gorillascript/)? Its [prelude](https://github.com/ckknight/gorillascript/blob/master/src/js...) is written in gorilla macros :)
Showing a picture of iProduct lined desks with young people staring intently into their screens looks a lot cooler and trendy than a picture of a hallway with closed doors I guess.
Yes, but there are more low income Amazon warehouse jobs than mid income building cars jobs.
I'm not worried about humans talking, I'm worried about the ambient noise of the train/plane itself.