skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I just find it a bit annoying how people that never met him find it cool to dog him.

I don't need to talk to an asshole personally to know that they're an asshole. If it quacks like a duck...etc.
I thought you were on to something with creating a product for language professors for a second. I have been thinking about making a product for the language space. If I did it would be targeted towards the teachers and language teaching institutions. Like someone commented, there will be eventual churn on the consumer side. The teacher's job is to teach students language, how well they do that is another conversation, so when you sell to a teacher it seems more likely they'll continue using the product for as long as they are teaching.
They can take Mer and create a kiosk style UI in a very short time. No need for heavy distros lifting.
I am not an expert in whatever field "materialism" belongs, so I will defer to accepted knowledge (or lack thereof) as professed by layperson-friendly sources such as Wikipedia. Till the time I really get interested in these fine differences.

May I point out that the tone you use in these discussions is not, in general, of a nature which encourages a lay person to even read what you say, much less to follow up on your ideas? People really do not like being looked down upon, and your writing comes across as quite condescending (among other things). Here are a couple of things from the parent comment to illustrate this:

1. "the obvious (to anybody who understands what a computer is and does) conclusion that computers do only syntax, while ..."

Do you see what's wrong with a statement of the form "What I want to prove is obvious to anyone who knows even a little something", and how it might come across as (i) unacceptable hand-waving even in a research paper in the relevant field, and (ii) highly condescending in public discourse?

2. The whole paragraph starting with "You can prove me wrong. ..." comes across as childish. Who am I, anyway, and why should I go to all that trouble to prove you wrong, even if I was somehow capable of doing it? As an analogy, suppose in a discussion on life outside earth I quote current expert consensus as found on Wikipedia as saying that there is potentially life on Europa [1]. And someone retorts saying "No. Prove me wrong. Just build a spaceship which can go bring some life from Europa." Do you see something wrong with such a response? In particular, do you see something wrong with the use of the word "just" here?

3. Your repeated insistence that everyone should read some work and critique it before countering your arguments comes across as obnoxious behaviour.

4. A minor point: it is Nagel, not Nagle. I mention this because I see you making the same mistake in multiple comments.

You seem to have interesting points to make. It would be good if you make them in a way which people find enjoyable to read.

[1] I made this up on the spot. I don't know what the current expert consensus is, so check Wikipedia before taking this as true :).

(Edit: Formatting)
I think that "qualia" is the wrong question. Please see my other comments on this story.
How about Facebook add a "Follow" feature to get 100% of the posts? They don't even need to show the number of followers a page has received. At least then users have the option to see everything a page has to offer. "Likes" no longer have any meaning, so we need something that actually means something.
No one in large organizations wants to leave their budget unspent so they can get more of it the following year. It's actually a culture in enterprise/government organizations to blow what's left of one's budget before the end of the year. I think this is the culture that brought us from $100m to $6 billion.
Ultracoin Power Efficiency Protocol – Undervolting
That's legal sophistry.
Doesn't this just add a huge barrier to the most basic type of participation on the site?
No, I'm not begging the question. In another response, I readily admit that if materialism is true, then AI is a foregone conclusion.

Please prove that mere electromagnetism can cause intentions, goals, and teleology. Limit yourself to Maxwell's equations, and the consequences thereof.

I look forward to your response, but I am not hopeful that you will provide a cogent answer.
If a bright-line distinction between syntax and semantics requires a rejection of materialism, to me that is a pretty compelling reason to not draw a distinction between syntax and semantics.

Maybe "most people" ignore the evidence, but I think anigbrowl gave a pretty good response and I'd reiterate his suggestion that Hofstadter and Dennett have given adequate replies to Searle. I would go so far as to say Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach is the most important popular-audience book ever written about AI.
I like it. I am signing up. But I think the challenge is that I dont even check the email I signed up with on facebook. I use a separate email.
Are you seriously bringing up Searle's Chinese Room as an argument against AI research? According to Wikipedia, "The Chinese room argument is primarily an argument in the philosophy of mind, and both major computer scientists and artificial intelligence researchers consider it irrelevant to their fields." Right on.

First off, philosophy of mind is 100% irrelevant to modern AI research, which is more concerned with creating algorithms that act as if at a human level of intelligence than creating algorithms that recreate human states of mind. You guys might not get that, but every person working on AI does.

Even given that, it's allowing for a very charitable interpretation of Searle's "work": most of us consider Searle to be a fucking idiot at best, a troll in the most likely case. The Chinese Room analogy is tortured, and pretty much assumes dualism from the start - to me, if a dude in a closet pushing papers around could fake understanding Chinese as far as an outside observer is concerned, we'd have solved strong AI, so I don't care whether Searle thinks we've succeeded or not.

Re: Nagel, I don't know his stuff, but having read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_it_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F, I'm not too interested, there's so much vagueness there that I feel like this is just more bullshit questioning whether we have achieved "real" understanding or just a mechanical approximation. And again, I don't care. I want a program that acts as if it's intelligent, and it needs to pass most normal people's bar for intelligence, not some dipshit philosopher's bar for being human.

Philosophers have always been misinterpreting AI research's goals, which is why nobody in AI has ever paid them any attention, and which is also why they'll never be relevant to anything. Even if they're right, they're not asking questions that anyone cares about.
What do you think the most viable alternative is? DNSCurve?
Well, even maths and not-applied physics tend to produce technological advances down the road in a way that history tends not to. But it's true that very different ROI timescales are being blurred together under the STEM brandname.
No, that's not really my take-away from this. The author knows that people only want to be able to communicate in one "app" with "everyone" for "free"[1]. But he purposefully downplays sms and xmpp in in favour of centrally controlled silo-style messaging stuff (you could of course argue that sms is a silo too, but at least it by definition allows (sometimes expensive) federation).

For a while, xmpp was set to become this app, everyone on facebook, and everyone on google/gmail where on xmpp -- for me it was the first serious contender to sms. But neither facebook nor google/gmail wanted to federate, so while I could communicate with (almost) everyone I could sms via xmpp, it wasn't like that for most users (they used either facebook chat or gtalk).

Now google is killing xmpp in favour of hangouts, basically saying apple users can use ichat and sms, android users can use hangouts and sms -- so the only way to tell your friend (as in any of your friends, using one app) you're late for a meeting is sms (still/again).

Unless Google and Apple (owners of Android and iOS) get their shit together and accept that federated xmpp is actually pretty f*ing useful I see nothing but fragmentation in our near future.

The only possible light in the end of the tunnel is the death of telecom and birth of datacom, with everyone moving to SIP (or equivalent) with cross-platform, cross-provider presence-notification, voice, video and text communication.

In the mean time these toy technology companies can play with their stock value, but I really doubt (and really, really hope) none of them will "win", where winning means reaching the global status that PSTN/regular voice phone and sms has today.

I think anyone that thinks differently need to wake up from their dream.

[edit: forgot 1]: data transfer costs money, and will continue to cost money. But you won't be paying 20 cents to send a short message, you'll be paying by the gigabyte, as you should. With all income from voice and sms falling away, I'm not sure what will happen to gsm/lte style wireless prices, I'm guessing there'll be similar tiers as today: ridiculously expensive pay-as-you-go (20 cents a megabyte?) and whatever-people-will-pay monthly (flat-ish) charges (in Norway that'd be around 50USD/Month give-or-take).
> Please give me a definition of "meaning" that can be applied to a human brain and not to a computer.

You associate a meaning to the symbol "dog". You think of an animal that barks, wags its tail, chases cats and squirrels, and is happy to see you when you get home. You associate something in the real world what that symbol. (That is the very meaning of doing semantics.)

The computer does nothing of the sort with the symbol "dog".
Linux drivers are no longer much a problem, and haven't been for a while.

Linux is have trouble shaking off its old reputation though.
YouCompleteMe is a bigger install than vim is. It causes pain for a lot of people. I've gotten segfaults just because of an upgraded python, I've heard way too many people on #vim report about issues with YCM, the installation is a pain, and it's way too huge for my liking.

I like simple plugins that do one thing and one thing well. And you can see why I decided to make this plugin :)
Is the transparency channel also compressed or only the rgb?
This author almost completely misses the point. The basic architecture behind SHA-2 is similar to MD5 and SHA-1, and the fact that attacks are possible on MD5 and SHA-1 means an attack could be possible on SHA-2. Then if SHA-3 used the same architecture again, a weakness in SHA-2 might lead to a weakness SHA-3. Then both SHA-2 and SHA-3 are insecure.

Since SHA-3 is now based on a totally different architecture, any weakness in SHA-2 has no effect for SHA-3. At the same time, if someone does find an attack against SHA-3, SHA-2 is still secure.
That was a shortened version of the original article title. I see they changed it.

What would you suggest is a better one?
Send email asynchronously with Rails and Sidekiq
Thank you for correcting me on Nagel's name. I'm embarrassed that I misspelled it, cuz his book is right in front of me.
> and the obvious (to anybody who understands what a computer is and does) conclusion that computers do only syntax, while humans clearly do semantics also,

You keep claiming this is "obvious". But it can only be "obvious" if you first accept that the materialistic hypothesis is false or that there is some reasonable definition of "computer" in a purely materialistic universe that does not include a brain and there is no possible alternative structure that can meet a reasonable definition of "doing semantics".

To me, there's no reasonable way of claiming that the answer to this is "obvious". Firstly, the materialistic hypothesis is my default assumption in the absence of any evidence whatsoever that it does not hold, secondly, in the absence of evidence against the materialistic hypothesis, it is my default assumption that the brain is a computer.

Thirdly, while I accept that we could define a category "sentient brains" and intentionally exclude it from the category of "computers" for the sake of argument, while I concede that using such definitions it might be possible that there is no alternative means of physically structuring computers that could give the same outcome as the structure of a brain, even then I don't see any justification for why it would be obvious.

Your arguments in this thread, when not circular, rests on a whole cloud of hand-waving away controversial issues behind claims of "obviousness".
I hope you succeed. When I was in school, I spent some semesters piggy backing over my classmates because I couldn't afford the $239 book. I did buy a 2 editions behind book for $30 only to find out that some of the home work were numbered differently or missing.
Direct Browser Upload to S3 with Python Flask
Ask for what you want
If you don't talk to someone personally, aren't you relying on a third-party(known or unknown) to provide insight? That you are willing to believe someone you've never met is an asshole based solely on somebody else telling you it's true doesn't seem very fair.
I hear this refrain over and over again -- my posts aren't being shown to my fans! -- but it does not match up with my experience at all. My posts usually reach 35-45% of my fans. Organically, without any promotion. Granted I only have a total of ~2000 fans... perhaps this effect everyone is talking about only kicks in e.g. above 10k fans?

To be honest, I think everyone is just crying that "Facebook isn't showing my fans the stupid and unengaging crap that I post". How about trying some actual content that your fans might actually want to see? The one thing FB has become very adept at is filtering out crap.
It would be great to see more detail on how they actually got caught after going undetected for so long.
Sounds like they're solving a problem very few people (couple of frequent travellers) have. Is swapping a SIM such a big deal? You can already move your number to a different carrier.

More, I think that swapping a card is actually pretty good UI. It unambiguously shows that you're making a big change. Unlike a toggle in the menu. It's easy to understand and hard to exploit.

OTOH, why not. Having an option of frictionless carrier hopping may have some unforeseen (at least by me) upsides.
I agree on the budget practice of spending it all to avoid a cut next year. I think that's very common.

Small note though: I think the $100 ($93.7) to $6B was an increase in seized assets.
Plus, ATMs (at least where I live) run on stone-old machine usually which you would expect Linux might even be easier to run on.
Turkish government is not a typical government in that regard. It's more like an oligarchy where some chosen people can get things done with a simple call in minutes. An example: There is a "Ministry of Telecommunication and Communication" (TİB) and the president of TİB, solely by his own will, can shutdown web sites within 4 hours.
https://github.com/insin/newforms

The default branch is currently focused on using it with React to add client-side interaction and using React's server rendering - master (0.4.2) can be used for rendering and validation anywhere, though.
What I had in mind was something that would operate in a peer-to-peer fashion similar to bittorrent, and everyone who uses it would install an app to use it. If people only or mainly used web-based frontends it would be unlikely to work well.

Also in response to the earlier comment: the app could provide a friendly interface for generating keys which doesn't require the user to know the technical details. They would just have an "identity file" that would be stored on the app, with options to copy it to a usb stick etc.

Additional paragraph which seems to be cut off from all comments.
I'm guessing they'll just fork something and keep using the same kernel for "50" years, ignoring security updates. "Install this tgz as base system, add your config".

What's the attack surface anyway, the modem drivers? It really, really shouldn't be possible to overflow anything using a "custom" card, or the number pad... (I do sometimes wonder about hostile smart card code for chip and pin, though...).
> You think selling it as "it can't be banned in Turkey" is going to be appealing to many people?

It might in Turkey :)

I'm aware these things are really, really hard to get off the ground. But if what you said was entirely true, there would be no new social networking services appear, ever. Among the thousands of efforts, every now and then one manages to become successful.

Additional paragraph which seems to be cut off from all comments.
TED: Larry Page speaks of Google's far-off vision
And trackers still exist today ! Check for example MODPlug Tracker and Renoise.

I have used trackers for years, and although I use mainly modern DAWs to make music today, I have never been able to be as much prolific with them as with trackers.
I can't think of anything in terms of reputation that might hinder this movement. What did you have in mind exactly?
Normally an edit would be good, if the post can't be edited any more, deleting it would just remove context from the concise rebuttal.
Mercator puzzle
You know, I just now finally understood what was going on there: a randomized map matches no territory. Enlightenment achieved.
No, (unless there was some edit that has been very cleverly camouflaged) -- an erroneous comment was taken as some kind of attack on Wolfram. I can't see any reasonable reading of that comment as "hate", though.
> but no one cares that "Watson doesn't know it won".

I care, especially that Watson doesn't know when it lost or learn from its mistakes, because it doesn't actually understand anything. Watson's fragile intelligence relies on the programmers tweaking its algorithms for every particular subject. It's a glorified search engine, as opposed to a true advance in general AI.
I was a huge Ted Nelson fan before that reunion, and his keynote was the main reason I attended (wasn't expecting Woz to make it). Still am a huge fan but his talk was not what I expected at all, and was a bit hard to listen to.

Fortunately, Woz had me walking out in high spirits. Woz is an awesome, awesome engineer and creator for all engineers and creators everywhere.

I am trying to find a way to go meet up with that Wizard Woz myself right now, since I didn't get a chance to talk to him at the reunion.
Rather than an all or nothing proposition, I saw this quote as an elegant framing of what the liberal arts are: nice-to-haves in the wake of ought-to-haves in the wake of die-or-haves. In the popular discourse, we aren't always afforded that sense of perspective.
> in which case I consider the lie to be the result of deliberate ignorance.

It's not a lie, if it is the result of ignorance.

I'm not even sure what "deliberate ignorance" means in this context: he knowingly doesn't know if Wolfram mentioned this, and guessing he probably did, chooses to say he didn't?
Overall, FB is taking a very hostile position and it is only thinly veiled.

>“Like many mediums, if businesses want to make sure that people see their content, the best strategy is, and always has been, paid advertising,” a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

That "Like many mediums" bit is a slap in the face. It's implying that those who would complain are unrealistic freeloaders or otherwise somehow at fault for their own declining engagement. This, even when it is really due to FB actively working to cause the decline.

Also, it completely pretends that FB has always been "like many mediums" and did not encourage like-activity, as well as re-inforce the benefits of said activity with previously higher levels of engagement.

The net message, essentially, is "why would you expect a free ride from FB, when you don't expect it anywhere else?"

Very snarky, condescending, and hostile.
I'm confused what you are doing. You are taking an existing lossy format e.g. JPG and then recoding it in another lossy format. So yes you may save an insignificant amount of bandwidth but at the expense of introducing potentially significant artefacts in your images. What serious web developer is going to want to do this ?
Please provide a definition of "associate a meaning to the symbol" that can be applied to a human brain and not a computer.

The plain reading of what you've written above is so trivially simple to implement in a computer that it is covered in every introductory algorithm course, so I presume you have either given a definition of "meaning" that is overly simplistic, or have a definition of "associate a meaning" that is substantially more complicated than a plain reading of the words.
> In another response, I readily admit that if materialism is true, then AI is a foregone conclusion.

Of course, that is a meaningless admission when you repeatedly claim that it is proven that materialism is false elsewhere.

I do not need to prove anything. I've already explained why your claims are unproven and why your arguments does not support your conclusions unless your stated conclusions are already true.

I am not the one repeatedly making strong assertion of fact about controversial claims. The only thing I've made strong claims about is the logical validity of some of your arguments.

You might note that I've carefully tried to avoid making strong assertions at all in this matter. While I default to the materialistic hypothesis, I do so in the absence of evidence of anything else. Because of this default assumption, I by extension assume that human level intelligent AIs - and above - will eventually happen.

Those assumptions are as far as I'll go with respect to making claims about it, and there's nothing there that demands a proof, since I've not claimed they're proven, unless - given the context of this discussion - you want me to prove I actually hold those assumptions, rather than being some automaton that is somehow only capable of syntax.
WebP was released 3 years ago hence your entire premise is faulty.

The real truth is that being the best technically rarely guarantees success in the market.
i do not believe in materialsm, but i do believe that intention and goals are emergent phenomena. nevertheless, i think that's mostly a separate issue.

it is a false equivalency to say that materialism is false and that it is impossible to build strong AI. if the material world alone can be described
by laws of causality, then we should expect to be able to simulate some significant part of it. if it cannot, and if extra-material forces impact the material world, then we may have no hope. but existence of extra-material stuff (which i call "qualia") may or may not assert a force that affects the material world.
Alpha channel should be non-lossy compressed AFAIK.
What is this thing we call "meaning"? Can it be a point in a vast and complex "pattern space" and the meaning of that point is the structure of all the "paths" that map that point to other points in this same pattern space?

Our act of arbitrary categorization of patterns into "syntax" and "semantics" just seems to obscure that fact that they are just two arbitrary encodings of patterns.

How can we know that one pattern is equal to another pattern in a different encoding? Don't we agree on these mappings with other pattern spaces (read humans)? As we communicate, so do our pattern spaces start interacting, and all we can hope for is a convergence on the mappings sans encoding.
I sense another flame war. Unless there is new data from a new set of image quality/compression tests, I would urge people to just look up the old threads instead of rehashing the arguments again.

Note: Although YouTube announced a switch, Google+ has long been using WebP to serve up images in the stream with substantial savings, so the usage of it by Google on their services is not new.
Microsoft defends its right to read your email
They should just go straight to Android - nice touchscreen drivers, 3G, that Dalvik thing - what more is needed apart from a few device drivers to spit the money out?