skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You can find Github's last statement on the matter here [0]. As to the allegations they were made by Julie Ann Horvath [1] and you can find them in the following articles:

Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism And Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit [2] HN [4]

GitHub Engineer Quits After Alleging Gender Harassment [3]

[0] https://github.com/blog/1823-results-of-the-github-investiga...

[1] https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes...

[3] http://valleywag.gawker.com/github-engineer-quits-after-alle...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408055
don't know why you're getting no discussion here.

couple typos: "the the" and "this is can".

-bowerbird
This could certainly be plausible. Fairly rigorous studies. Just needs to be repeated in other labs
My point is that the allegations are gender-based in nature, which makes this a gender issue by definition.

This did not become a gender issue when "other people support[ed] that claim." This became a gender issue the moment Julie claimed she was harassed because she was a woman. Whether her claims are invalidated or not doesn't change the gender-based nature of her claims--it would simply mean that her claims (which are still gender-based!) are not supported by the evidence.
I wonder if the fact that there are no ads on the GitHub site is part of the problem.
"Not only is this the situation we are in, but we have somehow gotten here with only the feeblest of protests. "

Feeblest of protests? I ditched Comcast years ago, and it apparently bothers them enough that they send a person to my door every month or two. What does he want me to do, storm the local Comcast office?
Have Cyberlibertarians digitally deleted the Left?
I've long thought that among the chief promises of a self-improving AI is not that it will exponentially make new discoveries in Science. But that it will be able to synthesize and combine existing knowledge in a manner too complex for most humans.

The problem with current knowledge is that humans just aren't capable of handling more than a tiny fraction of it. A functional AI (even of the weaker variety) is capable of handling orders of magnitude more information and arriving at novel combinations of existing knowledge.

Part of the reason the impact-per-researcher has fallen so much is that there is simply so much more to know and consider than there was a century ago. And Computers are really, really good at dealing with volumes of information that would overwhelm a person.

And while a self-improving AI may someday slow down it's rate of self improvement, in the short term its rate of self-improvement would appear exponential as it groks scales of knowledge humans can't cope with.
Microsoft increases OneDrive for Business storage from 25GB to 1TB per user
Yet JavaScript is fundamentally single threaded by design...
Nonsense. A high-level language developer uses the higher concepts to get more work done, in better ways, and less time. Hacks always strike back, sooner or later.
Thanks for all the LIDAR info!

A human seems to be able to differentiate pretty reliably (although not perfectly) between dry spots and drywall. And at 50 meters, I expect that binocular vision doesn't do much.

I wonder if people can use parallax (i.e. road being revealed differently) for a 2 inch object like drywall at those kinds of distances and speeds. Parallax is uses in Google's latest software lens blur, so I'm sure it's been in robot cars since the beginning.
This is a final class project (Advanced VB.) After the semester's over i'll probably rewrite it in C# (because I really am not a fan of VB) and find some use for it.

Edit: I just realized my last post made it look like the name of the app was "Homework"... no, it literally is homework :)
There's a couple of ways I see to go with this discussion. I'll explore both...

1. We are in a temporal frame. The evolution of intelligence has gotten us to this point. Right now, high creativity is unique to humans. I agree that the possibility exists for humans to create creative beings.

2. The definition of creativity is broad at the moment. Pursuits that are defined as "creative" are also changing. As we learn more about creativity (zoom into the definition), we will identify more nuances of creativity. Indeed, it may loop back to a fundamental notion of cognition which itself may be related to a fundamental notion of self-perpetuating systems creating the best possible outcome for it's lineage.

I suspect that creativity is akin to a driving force. So in a fractal system, "creativity" or "emotional drive" is the equation which creates/generates the fractal over time.
It's truly a sad case of cyber bullying. I don't see how the school can ban the app they can probably ban it from their network but most kids would still be using their cellular data to access the app.
Symptoms of Dysfunction in Software Teams
I wonder how much of this buyout-without-investment behavior is just a method that big providers use to punish users for "cable cutting."
We know for certain that Seth had coronary artery disease. How? Because he had a non-zero score on his coronary CT scan. It is not normal to have calcified coronary arteries -- at any age. It may be so common as to be the statistical norm, but coronary calcification is never physiologically normal. Coronary artery disease is responsible for about half of all deaths in the United States. Seth may have had "quality health cover," but we know he still developed coronary disease. Remember, too, that sudden unexpected death is the first symptom in 20% of cases of coronary artery disease. This is a terrible problem that the field is working hard to solve.
It's really a question of how quickly it gets difficult to improve an arbitrary AI algorithm, in terms of the problem-solving capabilities unlocked by having an AI algorithm of that strength. Once you have given beliefs about these quantities, you've got a belief about the result of AI research.

I think that the AI problem gets hard really quickly. It's less clear how much problem solving ability having an AI algorithm gives you. There's three ways I'd use an AI to do AI research better - AI(improve_AI_algorithm), AI(get_more_computing_power), and AI(improve_AI_research_process).

The first is pretty much a run-once sort of thing for a fixed gain. The second is a lot less clear to me - I'm not really familiar with the constraints of chip design, and convincing people to put more resources into AI research hits diminishing returns. The third is much more promising at the current level of AI sophistication, for doing things like hire/fire decisions, scheduling and resource allocation, etc.

Anyhow, my model is roughly a sideways S, with low-hanging fruit getting more reachable at first until it gets exhausted in fairly short order. There's a rather broad distribution of where it ends up afterwards and how quickly the easier improvements get found. The low end wouldn't get classified as a singularity, but the high end would.
I agree that the merger approval is the original and bigger problem at large, however, unlike AT&T/Alltel this does not seem like 'monopoly prevention' but in fact just the opposite. Calling it 'saving-face' doesn't even do the situation justice.

Sure, Comcast sells off 1.4 million viewers. The gap from No.1 to No.2 post-merge then grows from ~11m subscribers to nearly ~25m. Not only that, but as the LA Times article points out, this is "a fast-evolving industry that requires huge capital investments to maintain..."

Competitors will be reluctant to enter an industry with such significant capital barriers, and why would they? Comcast owns their customers before they've even started.
Wonderful quote:

"Suddenly, the social 1 percent was subject to the same sort of cyber torment that had in the past been directed at the students at the bottom of the pyramid."

I love the way technology brings about democracy and levels the playing field!

:)
"...after being victimized by Theresa Preston-Werners and subsequently terminated."

Pretty vague, are there any details on WTF happened? Also, if IS valleywag...
Link to actual article: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/OptimizeCS...

from what I can tell, it is focusing on inlining css, not placing the <link> below the <html> tag.

</html> <link> is invalid, but testing </body><link></html> IS valid. my guess is that the docs have a typo.
>We don't know that now. We just know that no one was willing to admit to a company hired investigator

You assume here that someone is holding back, but we don't know that either.
>Let's take a simple example, the most general AI we know of, genetic algorithms

But that's not the most general AI we know of. Goedel Machines are the most general AI we know of.
> I wonder if we will ever be able to have a sane conversation about the "sexism in the Valley" or the fact that it concerns itself with something that is so technologically intrenched the mob mentality of the Internet will always draw centre stage.

Perhaps, but if so it will never happen in public. There are too many people craving the moment to toss their incendiary in for that to happen.
Youtube censors Bitcoin speech
You're confusing Julie's Twitter feed for Melissa's.

EDIT: See? https://mobile.twitter.com/luckiestmonkey/tweets
Horvath's response: "[My claims] are now, more or less, substantiated."

Is she delusional? The report doesn't substantiate her claim of sexism AT ALL. They couldn't even find the malicious code removals by "the guy who she wouldn't let fuck her" that was one of her central claims.

https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/460865208810885120
I'm curious if anyone here has any perspective on how close we are to absolute physical limits in CPU design. Last I heard, we're getting pretty close to dealing with quantum issues due to how small the transistor and connection size is getting, the frequency of light we need to do the etching, etc. I wonder if anybody knows how close we are to hitting hard limits in various categories. Surely, we'll hit some eventually, and I wonder what happens then.
How about scoring people's driving ability based on their car's actions, record licenses plate numbers, and report it to insurance companies. As someone who is a good-but-fast driver, I am not sure how I feel about this.
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
-- Blaise Pascal
> People do not genuinely optimize for what they want, they tend to optimize for what they want given what they know today and their internal biases.

Absolutely. Which means that there are substantial switching cost, which a slight marginal improvement can't overcome. But if benefits are so immense, they should be able to. I think Haskell's supporters tend to overstate its advantages (and it certainly has plenty of those), and discount its disadvantages (and it's got plenty of those, too). All in all, Haskell is an extremely interesting and very good language, but it most certainly does not solve all or even most of the challenges of modern software development. It's good, it's very interesting, but it's not the second coming. I, for one, would take the JVMs monitoring and hot code swapping capabilities over Haskell's type safety, because those solve a bigger pain point for me.
So kinda like exactly what Community portrayed in their MeowMeowBeanz episode

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3278596/?ref_=tt_ep_ep9
Is anyone disputing the activities of the Preston-Werners at this point?

This report clearly states there were issues with the Preston-Werners, and he's been made to leave the company.
Liability should be pretty simple. Just like now, the owner of the car is liable. In my state this is the case even if someone else is driving; not sure this is the case elsewhere but that would seem to apply to a computer driver as well as a human one. The logic is, if you allow someone else to use your property and they cause damage with it, you are liable.

Insurance (assuming the owner has it in force) may pay, but the liability still rests with the owner.
What is this, Sesame Street?
So let me get this straight... According to you, having someone analyze and criticize your work, and state so is in fact actually saying "hurr, durr, [attack_target]'s too stoopid"?

And yes, you are misleading. Because if I didn't actually go read that article and find the part you were complaining about I would have assumed an actual insult was where you claimed it was. Whereas, in fact, I found criticism, which the author attempts to justify/backup in the rest of the article. But you'd have us believe that that was all that was in the whole article. That's called misleading people; pretty much general dishonesty on your part.
Your tool is really cool. Thank you for sharing.
Why no one uses your government data
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/maintain-true-net-...
Dear eBay, it's 2014
The IBM Cloud Marketplace: New Partnership Forged
Minesweepers robotics competition aims for a landmine-free world
Show HN: Post Bitcoin transactions in one page of JS code
Context. The issue at hand is regarding the mistreatment of women. Of course it makes sense to frame it that way.
We tend to think of technology with the "a rising tide raises all boats" line of thinking, or at least I do. But this is a pretty clear case of technology dragging everyone down. Yes, it may be an equalizing force, but we don't help the blind by taking the eyes of those with sight; it's equalization in the wrong direction.

I wish there was a solution, but there just isn't one. I think it just needs to run its course; maybe once everyone gets a black eye, they'll realize that it sucks and stop giving them to others. But I don't think it's quite that simple.
I came to the conclusion a while back that humans are just fundamentally religious. Even most people who don't believe in "gods" seem to end up largely clinging to some over-simplified, basically religious model of the world.

As examples:

Modern liberalism = New Testament Christian ethics with the government replacing god.

"Universe is a simulation" = Gnostic/platonic belief system (our universe as a sub-creation created by a flawed sub-creator), with a technological guise.

Belief in the Singularity probably appeals to some people in the same way that an imminent Rapture or Second Coming appeals to others. Especially with the uploading consciousness to computers and living eternally ...
They probably didn't mention that WarGames was the reason why they "upgraded."
Exactly. If they came out with this response first this shitstorm probably wouldn't have escalated to this point.
XKCD: Google Announcement
Similar stuff was written on bathroom walls or passed around in notes when I was in high school...

And everyone had to see it on the wall as opposed to having to be informed about and go look for it.

The point? this isn't novel and don't blame the medium.
Cable (and other utilities) are not good examples of free-market capitalism since they operate under franchise agreements with the affected municipalities.
That looks great, thanks, will eval it.
Write a script to post awful things about everyone.

Then write a script to post nice things about everyone.
How are these customers not free to select their supplier? If you dont like the new owner then you can switch to another service provider.

Suppliers switch ALL THE TIME in the free market and consumers are none-the-wiser. Consumers care about the end product...is it up to par for what I pay? Think of the hundreds of suppliers that go into the computer you use. Did you select them? Do you care who provided the plastic for your keyboard?
So you are saying sexism is unfalsifiable
Gandi has a simple redirect/forwarding option in their management panel which handles this kind of thing, so it looks like he's overlooked that?

http://wiki.gandi.net/en/dns/zone/www
On the other hand, it will be best case a decade or two before these things are out on the road en masse and even then only the youngest drivers wouldn't have gained many hours of driving experience. Meanwhile, in that time both automated car and sensor tech will have advanced quite a bit. It's only been a decade since that first DARPA challenge and five years since google started their project, after all.
Exactly. Who's at fault in a self-driving car crash? The car model+software combination (unless the driver explicitly did something negligent or reckless). But the insurance company will cover it, and simply adjust the cost of insurance each year based on how often that model+software combination crashed in the previous year.
What would appropriate HR policies be? The following is what I thought of, and rejected (note - I'm not a lawyer, I don't know any laws about HR, and most importantly: this is all highly hypothetical, I haven't even considered starting a company yet):

(1) forbid "workplace romance" - this is very against my philosophy of encouraging personal freedom, and I don't think I would want to work for a company that had this policy. Moreover, I don't think this would solve the problem - false allegations could still be made, and true allegations could still be denied.

(2) disciplining the one who makes the inappropriate action - this too has the "he said, she said" problem as above, and furthermore the appropriateness of the action is often determined not by the subject's action itself, but how the object perceives it.

The best policy that I can think of is: all employees are expected to act professionally in the workplace, and to not be affected by their emotions (if they can't manage that, they should take a day off). Workplace romances are discouraged, because they may result in hard feelings between employees, but if you think being with the person is worth risking your job, go for it. In case two people have a conflict unrelated to their work, they should handle it as adults. If they expect action from the employer, they should present concrete evidence (emails, code commits, phone call logs, voice recording of the conflict, ...).

I realise that this sounds a bit harsh and insensitive, but that's what would work for someone like me - in the rare instances where I disliked my coworkers, I put my feelings aside and consciously decided to give them "another chance" by recognising all the great work they do. What are your thoughts, and what kind of policy would you suggest/instantiate?
Which? 'Male Scent May Compromise Biomedical Research' seems better than 'Experimenter gender is a confounding factor in lab animal research', but which was the original?
This is just reflexive HN negativity. As a pain researcher who's completely unaffiliated with the group that did this work, I find this to be an excellent paper - carefully done, with good controls, standard sample sizes for the field, and sensible assays.

People interested in more of the details can read the Nature Methods article here: http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmeth...

It also fits into a long history of work out of the Mogil lab about the limitations in our current assays for pain. It's worth noting that this is by no means an easy problem. Pain is inherently subjective, and measuring and quantifying it in humans is difficult, let alone in rodents. The only way forward is more work like this - that carefully quantifies the sources of potential bias and error in our assays, and proposes solutions for how to get around them.

Edited to add: Vox has a good interview with Mogil that goes more into this. You can read it here: http://www.vox.com/2014/4/28/5653444/mice-get-stressed-out-f...
SEO. And it's just one reason.
As long as we're admiring simple solutions that work on a dataset of size one, and as long as we're allowing a human in the loop, you might like this algorithm:

return (150, 200);

It's pretty straightforward, it just took some parameter tweaking to match Waldo's coordinates exactly.

Obviously I'm being pedantic, and I mean no disrespect, but I have a bone to pick with so-called "computer vision" algorithms that are little more than simple image processing. In this case, the time spent implementing and tuning the algorithm exceeds the time it would take to solve the task manually (e.g. pay a second-grader to do it). And as others have observed, it isn't obvious that this algorithm would generalize to other images, in which case no time is saved over the manual approach.

It is tempting to dismiss sophisticated techniques because (a) they are hard to understand and (b) the task seems so easy to our own brain-equipped vision systems. But the fact is, most interesting computer vision problems (including this one) require sophisticated representations to achieve robustness and generality. In other words, any good solution will need an answer to the question "What is a Waldo?" that is better than "a 50x50 patch of pixels with red and white stripes".
With respectable auditors, independence is what you're paying for. Auditors that are found out not to be independent quickly go up in smoke. Just ask anybody who worked at Arthur Andersen about the Enron scandal.
Actually things generally only work that way when the whistleblower has evidence of the things they claim. For instance, if Edward Snowden had come forward with claims of pervasive global surveillance by the NSA he would have been written off as paranoid like the many, many people who had made that claim before him. What made Snowden different is that he also brought with him verifiably authentic documentation of said surveillance among other things.

In this case we have the difficult choice of either dismissing claims of harassment and sexism, which is not a good thing to do if we want to help put an end to those things, or uncritically accepting someone's word without any evidence to back it up. And in fact with evidence going the other way, however insubstantial it may be. Doing that would not be good for the precept that one is innocent until proven guilty, which is something that is important to preserve for the disadvantaged, even when it benefits those in power.

At this time the only people who are making verifiable claims are github: They have hired an investigator who they believe to be competent and impartial. They name this person and their record can be investigated by anyone who cares. The investigator's report turned up evidence of bad behavior by the CEO and they took it seriously enough that he was removed.

Where do we go from here? As I said above, neither road is desirable and there isn't an easy answer. But I don't think that you can just say we should accept Ms. Horvath's word uncritically either, at least not when we have nothing to back up her claims.
Is it also a part of that "classic" scenario for one of the founders of the company to be forced out based on the results of an investigation that found "confrontational conduct, disregard of workplace complaints, insensitivity to the impact of his spouse's presence in the workplace, and failure to enforce an agreement that his spouse should not work in the office."? Does that always happen when some random disgruntled employee talks shit about a company on Twitter?
The fact that something like this exists really shouldn't surprise me this much, but it's still disgusting. And really, the app itself isn't a horrible thing by any means. But, if this was around when I was in High-School I doubt I would have had a good time. I'm not sure there's much you can do really, there isn't any way to ban it as a service, nor do I think that's the best course of action.

The internet can be a truly scary thing, people aren't afraid to say really hurtful things and lies when they're anonymous. IMO, the Principal's suggestion of not looking at it, while a decent suggestion, doesn't make tons of difference when you're walking through the halls and everybody's staring at you and their phone and quietly laughing.