skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The crux: "It seems to me that technology will soon destroy jobs faster than it creates them, if it hasn’t started to already. Which is a good thing! Most of the jobs it destroys are bad, and most of the ones it creates are good. Net human happiness should be vastly increased, not decreased, by this process — but, unfortunately, capitalism doesn’t work that way."

Instead of trying to lower costs for big companies by creating software that replaces people, we should strive to create something of value that can also employ people in meaningful numbers. Don't know what exactly, but that is the shape of it.
You might be interested to hear that e-mail scanning for the creating profiles for advertisements was killed a few days ago for Google Apps for Education. They are also ending it for Google Apps for Business and the grandfathered free accounts:

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.de/2014/04/protecting-stude...
OR embrace the structural changes and move towards a world in which fulfillment of basic needs (food/shelter/medical care) aren't tied to whether or not one has a job. All this extra value floating around should take care of that...
The "experiment" protocol specifically forbids that
Hi David. This is a cool app. I'm hesitant to download and run it on my computer, as the domain name is pretty funky, and there's not a whole lot of explanation about it. But I like the idea. Have you tried out my typewriter-ish web-app — first draft? http://beta.firstdraft.io. Let me know what you think, and whether you'd like to collaborate. I've got a good start.
He'll probably want to keep a few shares -- now that Balmer isn't the CEO company has a shot of getting back on track.
If you're interested in the actual details of the implementation of the syntax table, I had a great exchange on the 6502.org forum a couple of years back.

http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?p=17736

There is a (relatively easier to understand) stack-based expression evaluator, with hooks to allow for operator precedence. The interesting part is the scanner, which converts each line of BASIC into the tokens used by the evaluator. This is the bit that has the "syntax table diagram".

You may also find this article by Woz on the Apple][ from the '77 BYTE magazine a pretty interesting read.

http://www.downloads.reactivemicro.com/Public/Users/Grant_St...
Whether Gates owns Microsoft stock is of little relevance to either Gates or Microsoft. He's clearly not selling because he needs the money; he's selling because eventually he (or indeed his philanthropic foundation) will have more use for cash than MSFT shares.

As the article says, he is selling the stock progressively. I know very little about stock market strategy, but presumably this is the most effective way to divest without flooding the market, shocking the market, sending signals, prompting investigations of financial impropriety, etc.
you're too accustomed to being in front of a computer.

people who want to go surf the web or do other similar small tasks while sitting on the couch or while laying in bed will really enjoy their tablet (way more than a laptop). I personally use mine to read in bed at night.

its a similar concept to why people might want to buy a steam box (why get a console to run steam?): because in some situations having to sit in front of a computer might be a deterrent.
Even if we could recruit all the atoms in the known Universe

In the past 233 years we have evolved from the first steam machine to the iPhone 5S. I would say we have a pretty good track record at overcoming miniaturization problems.
Intelligence is not magical. What matters is algorithmic complexity. At some point only throwing more computing power can help.
Today, yes, maybe we could build an ai with close to human level intelligence, running on a very expensive super-computer(s) eating enormous amounts of energy. So what?

Human-level ai isn't going to figure anything that humans can't figure out themselves, so it's not going to design new almost-magical ways to enhance itself. Especially because the entire human race is basically one giant parallel data processing system, although communication leaves much to be desired. Moore law isn't going to help - silicon technology is very close to stagnation [1].

I don't think singularity is possible until potential ai-accessible artificial computation capability is at least several orders of magnitude higher than human brain's, which is impossible with silicon-based technology. Nothing to worry about.

[1] http://www.extremetech.com/computing/178529-this-is-what-the...
Then again, most people don't think that quantum level phenomena have anything to do with human intelligence.
32% in Finland, even though most kids are taught to swim at school. 28% of school children can't swim. Note that the definition my source uses is that you need to be able to swim 200 meters to "be able to swim".
Sometimes you will end up a waiting forever.
>> "We went once a week to the council pool on the other side of town and pretty much everyone, all 30 of us, had learned all that by the time we finished and left for high school aged 11."

I had the same experience. Even the people that had a fear of water/drowning could swim at a basic level without assistance. I think we got a 1 hour lesson per week for around 8 weeks a year for 2 or 3 years.
You can break older parses if you just wait long enough..
As long as you don't have to pay for your water. Those old machines use a lot more water than the new ones...
We’d encourage you to think about what this is a feature of on the path to being the next Google.

If the way the next Google will win is by making the current Google irrelevant, one way to make it irrelevant is to take away its revenue from advertising on the web. And one way to do that, is to add in web browsers the feature of hiding ads. Browsers could only show snip.ly ads according to a user's preferences. This might not be as obvious or easy considering for example how after all these years Bit.ly didn't try this.

Have you considered making a browser plugin?
Your comment is based on absolutely nothing aside from a little Balmer bashing. It's unlikely that he's selling because he thinks MSFT will under-perform, he's selling because he doesn't want the stock anymore therefore Balmer being replaced as CEO is unlikely to be an influencing factor.
Steve Jobs kept one share of Apple so that he could still receive Apple's annual reports. Though probably not an issue for Gates who is still on the Board of directors.
Microsoft is doomed! Surely if anyone knows a good reason to sell of shares, it's the founder!

Or, more realistically, Gates thinks his money is more worthwhile as cash than stock. It would be much easier for him to leave his philanthropic legacy a pile of cash instead of shares in Microsoft, so he's probably just shifting that balance now.
So go ahead and download the binary:

https://www.haskell.org/ghc/download_ghc_7_8_2#binaries

You're not comparing apples to apples.
Maybe he doesn't think Microsoft will do very well in the future, something I also believe. Both Windows and Office will become almost completely commoditized in the future, by Android and iOS. This has already started with Microsoft starting to offer free versions of Windows for some type of devices, on which they make no money. It's just a matter of time before this happens to most of their market segments (except enterprise, where I expect them to keep selling Office and Windows for quite a while).
> I consider it a basic life skill, as important as knowing how to cross a road.

Why?

As a horrible swimmer myself, I've gotten by just fine. Even went through a merchant mariner college (which is kind of like a watered-down Naval Academy) and earned a seaman license.
Maybe in the US. But in the Philippines, we're out of luck.

EDIT: I mean about the replacement part. Sure, they'll probably replace it after a several back and forth, plus the replacement will take serveral weeks.
Neat Cider Advert Mocks Apple Stores
Wheeler created a legacy dystopian novelists only dream about. The article uses netlfix vs amazon for their exclusive example but the true issue is news.

Millions of customers limited to seeing video from one news network. Fox news or CNN or MSNBC. Or one newspaper's video service. Suddenly instead of streaming NY Times you can only reliably view the Washington times or the NY post.

And forget about non profit or advocacy sites competing for mind share against large companies who can get their content delivered with high quality and reliably unbuffered.
This (GP) current top comment is an indirect ad-hominem and taking valuable real estate in this page. Up voting you.
This trend started before smartphones became popular... don't blame them.
Oauth covert redirect
I think a better example is needed. The example's solution to the Haskell heterogeneous list "problem" could be implemented in other statically typed languages (C++, Java) although it wouldn't be necessary to do so.

I don't see how the Haskell type system is safer in this example but I feel there's something interesting there which I don't understand. Can someone explain the advantage of type classes over what could be done with interfaces and templates in C++?
Re that pg tweet - "Will ownership turn out to be largely a hack people resorted to before they had the infrastructure to manage sharing properly?"

We have the technology to share the profits of AirBNB right now. The "sharing economy" can work on many levels now that we have the technology. Or we could all share YC, or Google, or even TechCrunch.

Who will step up to the plate first, then?

That's where this line of thinking goes, universal ownership not just of commodity resources, but of everything.

Who will lead us?

Note- While I sound satirical, I'm really not. This is the logical and likely necessary progression. And it really does require some leadership.
Oh ok. That's not too bad. And it sucks you can't just look up the hardware specs or something.
Sneak Peek: Play and control music using Cortana and Style Jukebox
I know he has an investment vehicle of some kind to manage his wealth (I think it's called Cascade?) but does anybody know what it has stakes in? And his quoted wealth figure doesn't include what he's given to his foundation, right? I just think it's pretty amazing that he's still #1 or 2 on the richest list given how little he owns of Microsoft and how much he's given away.
In that example I agree with you.

I've seen my fair share of bad design with good test coverage. Then I have also seen my fair share of good architectures with no test coverage.

When I see a good architecture with effective testing - that's just awesomeness. I think this is something to endeavour for. I'm not sure how you solve the problem of developers creating bad architectures with heavy test coverage but I don't think pure abandonment of TDD is necessarily the answer (for the alternative which is bad code with no coverage). I do not subscribe to the reasoning that Tests immediately cause a bad design - they definitely influence it but they are not the primary cause.
Doesn't Perfect Forward Secrecy protect against that? I am not sure if Google have implemented it but according to the Wikipedia entry:

This means that the compromise of one message cannot lead to the compromise of others, and also that there is not a single secret value which can lead to the compromise of multiple messages.
You're conflating the amount of money involved with the number of people involved. This rarely works for global situations.

The land-owners of the Alberta Oil Sands (last I heard the Koch brothers were #1 in this regard) have little or no incentive to put the money they make back into the Alberta community. They almost certainly have some token gesture scheme in place that will provide <1% of the profit to local funding, but that's just PR spin.

You can look at the money, or the people. As of October 2013 (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population) 10 countries had 58% of the world's population. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy it can be calculated that 64.67% of the money (by GDP) is controlled by 4 countries.

The population growth is decreasing due to (mainly) education. The disparity in the distribution of wealth is only growing greater. Those in the USA and Europe should realize that this isn't happening in their favour. In 2000, the USA was 22.61% of the world's GDP with China at 4.62%. The estimate for the next 6 years puts China at 26.79% and the USA at 15.45%.

Try telling the billions of people in the world living hand to mouth that the actions of some for-profit corporation will mean that they see an improvement in their quality of life.

EDIT: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IMF_Developing_Countries_M... for an illustration of what the IMF refers to as "developing countries". This should give you an idea of the amount of the planet that isn't a "player" in the world economy.
Or maybe because he doesn't expect doctors fighting malaria to receive their paycheck through NASDAQ.
2 words

Bluetooth keyboard.

Logitech, Staples and Microsoft have long harbored fear of a Bluetooth planet but all the hybrid and convertable stuff is there because people are fooled by form factors.

Add a BT keyboard and mouse and then you can write, develop software, etc. On a Win8 machine you can even use your old software.
Completely agree with "regulated markets", or better "lobbied government markets". The point in question, however, is that if everyone is doing the best for her/his own interests, there is no invisible hand for the environment: the free rider problem. In Adam Smith's defence, in his times people were not even close to the modern times of extensive planet resources dilution, oceans, forests etc
The kicker http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27253103
but none that can regularly throw and catch a baseball in an open environment.

Excuse me?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp89tTDxXuI
Most founders have a sense of entitlement to their companies and understandably so. In fact, it becomes a generational entitlement, as can be seen with family businesses and family fortunes.

Gates displays advanced thinking in divesting his entire ownership. I imagine it must have been a difficult decision to let go so completely. This is admirable.
Microsoft's revenue and net income has been growing over the past years, so while the media is happy to declare it dead, it is still in a good, health position.
Just knowing how to float would already prevent many cases or drowning; never mind being able to move around in the water, being able to not sink into it is in many cases more than enough. As someone who does know how to swim, once you figure out the floating part, movement then becomes pretty easy.
These are posts by workers in the tech field. Instead of dismissing it, you may want to consider if you are (a) a hopelessly powerless entity caught in a socio-economic regime that you can not in any way alter (e.g. "do no evil"); or (b) a member of a sub-set of society that actually has both the power and knowledge to get Nikola-Tesla-wanna-be-Page and fellow travelers to toe the required tech-ethical line.
They should have gone to Georgia Tech. At least until sometime around 1990. Before then, every Tech grad was required to take a course in "survival swimming". We had to learn to float for something like 45 minutes, swim the length of the pool underwater, swim with weights attached.

I guess a lot of engineers found themselves shipwrecked or something.

Actually, the concepts were developed by a Techie back in days of yore, as I recall it. Still, it was a fun class.

EDIT- of course there's wiki entry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drownproofing
Hooking Up With Tinder – An Older Man's Story
I hate to give such a short take, but any article about "net neutrality" that doesn't use the words "video" or "streaming" once isn't a serious discussion. "NetFlix" appears one time. The repeated use of "website" seems intended to mislead casual readers about what, exactly, is being debated. Slow banner ads for poor nuns? C'mon.

Any real resolution of this issue has to involve either forcing the cable companies to be dumb pipes and somehow figuring out how that will still incentivize anyone to build out infrastructure, or allowing companies representing 1/3 of primetime traffic to come to negotiated agreements with companies representing 1/3 of primetime viewers.
A lot has to do with the location. They claim a lot of statistics from Minnesota but maybe they forget that the water is COLDER THAN A WITCH'S TIT when it's not frozen. It's not exactly the best place to learn to swim.

Also, judging by how my kids handle the water at Santa Cruz, young people are invulnerable to cold water. That explains why fewer young people drown - invulnerability.
I've tried to follow this on and off for a while, but I don't understand what the justification is. We have a current system in place, and now we're under constant pressure to pass some new legislation to address a problem that doesn't seem to exist (certainly not for millions/billions of end users).
I'm not saying it is a bad thing if you understand the tradeoffs and can work within them, but what I'm getting at is that a lot of consumers unfortunately don't.

The extreme endurance torture tests that get reported often don't tell the whole story either - the more flash cells are cycled, the "leakier" they become and retention goes down significantly. Figures I've seen for SLC are 10 years retention after 100K P/E cycles, earlier-generation MLC 5 years after 10K P/E cycles, newer MLC is 5 years @1.5~3K, TLC is 1 year @ <1K. Of course retention tests don't make for as interesting news articles as endurance ones since they're almost like watching paint dry, but IMHO they are just as if not more important, and manufacturers should provide warnings that flash-based devices are intrinsically unstable and their retention ability is measured in years. "Bit rot" is a reality with NAND flash. I only hope that people who think they've "backed up" data onto used SSDs, memory cards, and other forms of high-capacity flash don't find that much of it has literally self-erased and disappeared after only a few years.
This is a really awesome book that explains what that it is and how it might work.

Race Against the Machine,

by Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-Accelerating-...

It has some ideas on how to get from where we are to there. I think the philosophies of Race Against the Machine and Capital in the 21st century are pretty insightful and the truth may be somewhere in between the two.
Privacy Efficiency – Measuring and Improving
> "I am surprised that so many AI researchers are unable to take the long-term view in this discussion."

In my opinion, the Middle Age alchemists who made gunpowder and first primitive bombs, didn't need to establish research programs to worry about advances in bomb-making leading to the threat of Mutually Assured Nuclear Destruction.

If they had tried (maybe they did?), maybe they would have come up with ideas like very heavy regulation of the trade of saltpeter, so that no one has enough to make a verybigbomb.

I agree that everything you described will happen in the future. But in my opinion we are at a Middle Age alchemist's level in AI research (no offense to AI researchers) and we can safely wait a 100 years, and let those people worry about the existential threat. They will be in a much better position to do so appropriately, because they will know much more than we do. And they will not be late, either.
At MIT they still force every undergrad to either pass a swim test or take a swimming class. If I recall correctly, the test included both several laps and 10 minutes of treading water (which is harder than it looks).
> by guaranteeing people money without requiring them to do anything in exchange, we decouple their value in society from their ability to do a job

He makes this sound like it was something bad.
Basically, that quote was the foundation of Marx' argument for why he saw capitalism as doomed to eventual failure.

People tend to think that Marx argued for the overthrow of capitalism because it is/was in his eyes morally "bad" or "evil", but that's not really the case.

Marx argued that capitalism was better than any previous system, and - despite failings - vitally necessary to bring the world to a point where production would for the first time in history make it possible to meet the basic needs of everyone

(without which, he insisted, a socialist revolution would be doomed to failure: in such a situation, redistribution would just make want common, and cause the old class struggle to re-assert itself - like it did in the Soviet Union etc. with the party installing itself as a new upper class).

But he expected capitalism to continue to push production efficiency to the point where it would overproduce and under-employ, and that this would eventually trigger socialist revolutions.

> Instead of trying to lower costs for big companies by creating software that replaces people, we should strive to create something of value that can also employ people in meaningful numbers. Don't know what exactly, but that is the shape of it.

Why? If we can reduce or remove the need for people to work, why should we not?
Pattern Matching – Make the Compiler Work for You
if tomorrow a law was passed the said only PV could be used to produce electricity, rates would sky rocket 3 to 5 times what they are today, the net effect of that would be that the vast majority of the population would not longer be able to afford electricity for their homes. Not to mention the price of goods would sky rocket leaving the vast majority of the population unable to buy anything beyond basic food stuffs if they could afford that. Entire Industries would collapse, which I am sure your fine with because less pollution.

So most people would be using Candles for light, and walking to their jobs (if they had jobs) etc

You seems to thing we can just switch to wind/solar/... with no effects on industry, prices, or quality of life. Everything would just be peachy and we will all sing kumbaya in the streets
Clouddomain
I can't really explain why, but I agree with you re: Facebook. Of all the big ones, is the one I'd like to work for the most. Maybe is the amount of social experiment you could do, I dunno.

Re: Amazon, I think you are totally wrong. They are a tech company that happens to do Retail.
It's an easy mistake to make when you aren't very familiar with the modern recruiting process.

It is literally the job of the recruiters to keep the pipeline as full as possible.
> we should strive

Who is "we"? There is no "we". Capitalism exists because different people have conflicting desires and unequal abilities. Capitalism is just another word for natural selection. Any attempts to get rid of capitalism as the "default" state of interhuman relations, will have to be accompanied by massive amounts of force, because you cant fight human nature without force. And even then, the only people willing to invest force and suffering to end the natural state of things are people who would personally profit from ending it, otherwise they would have no motivation to lift a finger, let alone lose one fighting to end capitalism, which then makes the attempt to violently end capitalism just another, more brutish form of natural selection.

You can not somehow "out-smart" natural selection and evolution and make people live happily together ever after without anybody exploiting anybody else. Inequality is a fact of life. By forcibly ending capitalism, the most humane form of natural selection to date, you can merely make the endeavour more bloody again.
"...a basic income, supplemented by occasional temporary gigs..."

The problem I see with gigs, as can be seen on the various freelancing sites, is you're competing with people on the other side of the world who need way less than you to get by. As far as online gigs go, I'd like to see some borders go up in all but special cases.