skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Bah....I call bullshit. This is pure anthropomorphism. Humans think they are the shit, but in fact they are only story-telling animals (which does give us an evolutionary advantage, incidentally. We are not limited in our information transfer inter-generationally by genes alone.) We are limited by the same physics as the chips we make. This innate quality you speak of is pure vapor. Even if humans were somehow able to become mentats, we'd still be limited by the tenants of information theory and what is computable. The fact that human intelligence is emergent leads me to believe that machine intelligence will be the same, albeit very different than a simian mammal's intelligence. Fish are smarter than we are at swimming. Think ants.
I'm certainly not grad student, but I wouldn't drop my pretty dime in graduate school studying AI. If anything, please not only research the current state of the field of AI but also research the history and those scientists working in the field right now.

I wrote a paper on AI a couple summer's ago and as crummy, arrogant, short-sighted, and inconclusive as it reads, if you happen to skim it, I did come away learning this. . .Turing was one of the few minds that was actually on to something, his vision of the machine and his idealistic tone reads more like that of SciFi writer, here is a most insightful re-paraphrasing of a Turing abstract (me thinks it was his first major publication):

I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'"[8] As Turing highlighted, the traditional approach
to such a question is to start with definitions, defining both the terms machine and intelligence.
Nevertheless, Turing chose not to do so. Instead he replaced the question with a new question, "which is
closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words".[8] In essence, Turing proposed to
change the question from "Do machines think?" into "Can machines do what we (as thinking entities) can
do?"[9] The advantage of the new question, Turing argued, was that it "drew a fairly sharp line between the
physical and intellectual capacities of a man.[10]

[my crummy paper: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19590360/AI]
Do what I did:

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-filter-out-facebook-fr...

I have 1500 "friends". I made a list of < 70 people I actually know. That's my main news feed. Love it.
Another option: Just leave things the way they are.

There's no huge need to make iTunes 64Bit or Cocoa. Most of the features Apple has added to iTunes in the last 3-4 years are just UI tweaks and some algorithms to make special types of playlists automatically. I don't think they're being constrained by Carbon or will be anytime soon. Being a native Cocoa app would probably improve some of iTunes performance issues but realistically those problems aren't that bad. I just don't see enough room for growth in iTunes to justify all the effort of porting Cocoa to Windows or iTunes to WebKit.
Perhaps Google already algorithmically detects and quietly penalises such link-farming, or has tweaked their algorithm to minimise its impact. From their quality guidelines (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en...):

Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.
Isn't it a shame you can't theme it at all?
I felt the opposite. I started a new job, and have both a linux (ubuntu/kde 4.3) and a mac machine.

I have developed mostly on windows (in mobile, you almost have to, as a lot of emulators are windows only, except iphone), and at home I have windows XP.

I wanted to like linux, but I couldn't. Too many little things that were just not right, There is nothing like "major" that doesn't work, but it is more like death from 1000s cuts.
Even repositioning the taskbar on the top, and making it the siz you want, and have the other menus down, was a pain.
Ejecting a USB device, doesn't quite work. Tranfering files through usb is more like magic. There is a progress bar, but at some point it dissapears. You would thing that it is b/c the transfer is done, but no. It is just a bug. You disconnect your usb, and the file is not there.

The whole experience is a pain. Switched to mac as fast as I could.

My preference so far:
Mac Os
Windows XP
Linux/ubuntu - Vista (draw)

If windows 7 was available, perhaps it would have been on pair with MacOs.

I understand that for server development, linux is great, but for mobile stuff, it is just not needed at all.

I'd rather have a system that just works.
The Right Way To Kick Off A Web Design Strategy Client Call
That first call you have with your client on constructing your web design vision is probably one of the most important calls you’ll make during a project from start to finish. If you do not ask enough questions, or the right ones, then you are going to end up handing over a design that the client is not interested in. This can cause a little loss in client faith in your abilities, as well as slow down the progress of the project and create more work for you. The more information you gather right from the start, the less changes you’ll have to make to your design concept. You have to make sure you are well prepared for this call.
For those people who claim conscious machines exist read

"Offer: One Billion Dollars for a Conscious Robot; If You’re Honest, You Must Decline"
http://www.eripsa.org/files/Bringsjord%20Robot.pdf

:)
Neuroeconomist Paul Zak on Markets and "the molecule of love"
Because of how the storage engine works, mysql insert performance degrades significantly as table size grows into double digits of GB, and especially once the PK index no longer fits in RAM.

Cassandra doesn't have to read indexes to figure out where to put the data so write performance stays constant as your data set grows.
I guess it's all about how you define "thin," "few", "small," and "weak." A page on how to eradicate your home of carpenter ants would possibly look like all of these, yet may be the most "authoritative" site on the web on the small, niche subject.
It's plausible that they have been maintaining the Windows port of the Cocoa libraries all along. This port existed at the time of the Apple/NeXT acquisition. It was called "OpenStep/Enterprise"...but it was, basically, a Windows port of the same APIs that became Cocoa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OPENSTEP_on_Windows_NT.jpg

Recall that when Apple still only sold PowerPC machines that MacOS X was "leading a secret double life" in the labs in the form of the same x86 port of NeXTstep that was brought forward in tandem with MacOS X as it progressed.

They could be doing the same thing with Cocoa/Win.
It's because you are missing the other part of the and

(if (and (not (null suggest-key-bindings))
(null executing-kbd-macro))

if(not(null(suggest-key-bindings)) && null(executing-kbd-macro))

Does that help?
Getting it to work could be a fun project, but I don't understand the desire beyond that. I thought the point of running OS X was that it "just worked"; if so a hackintosh makes absolutely no sense to me. Compound that with the licensing legality issues and I see no reason to actually bother.
The article is clearly opposed to laws that prohibit assisted suicide. I tended to agree with this position, but in a conversation recently someone made a point that I had not considered previously, which I'll repeat here.

When assisted suicide is legal, it becomes institutionalized and ends up becoming the duty of professionals. The impact on these people is worth considering. Each day they work, they are responsible for ending the life of numerous people. This has profound effects on people that are not necessarily positive.
A netbook is not a tablet pc; it's a mini-laptop. Nowhere does the author refer to a tablet pc. Indeed, he specifically mentions the Dell Mini 9 netbook, which has been on sale for the past year.
Few things make me feel palpable joy like this.
A computer-based consciousness would also be a result of evolution (albeit in a different way than things we know usually) being the byproduct of something that an evolved species created to help itself adapt.

Sometimes, when I'm getting overlogical, I see machine intelligence as being pretty much our destiny (i.e. that singularity thing) and that organic life may be very much obsolete once it gets into its own.

As organic life was to the universe before it, machine life will be to us.
How to innovate like Apple and IDEO on a shoestring budget
Virtual coupon dispenser in your competitor's store.
If you could simulate a brain at the atomic level, with sufficient precision, would it think?

I wonder if the mind arises in the brain because of quantum effects?

Anyway - modern AI is not generally about "strong AI" (attempting to make a humanlike intelligence) but more about "weak AI" (attempting to make things that solve problems.)
Rather than using the modulo on some user id, you'd generally want to use the modulo on md5(test_name + user_id). You can't be sure that user ids are evenly distributed -- for example, if they're monotonically increasing, then there might be subtle interactions between signup order and your A vs. B variations which could poison the validity of your results.

Bonus points: if you modulo on the user ID then Bob will always get whatever alternative you write first, which could be suboptimal unless you write your code in random order (which you don't). If you modulo the above MD5 thing, Bob will sometimes get A and sometimes get B for different tests, but always get consistent results within the same test.
Why not use a plain text file that could be read when the program (or the computer) starts with options written in human-readable form?

Reading a symlink is one system call. Reading a file is three or more system calls. There is an overhead cost for each system call -- and if you're going to be doing something for almost every process, you might as well be as efficient as possible.
Magic 090909 Geometry
Less than two years ago, I bootstrapped a consulting startup, by myself, and made $300 in my first month. I had one client.

My goal this year was to hit $3,000 a month by the end of the year; I hit it in June. I'm now regularly picking up new clients -- still entirely by word-of-mouth -- I have two people working for/with me, and so far the growth isn't showing any signs of slowing down.

While these aren't very impressive numbers, they're not too bad for one guy with no resources starting out. It's been a good exercise in non-stop business judo.

So, according to me:

1: Don't waste your time reading crap like this. You won't learn as much from it as you will if you just go out and work your ass off.

2: Oh yeah, working your ass off: do that, a lot. It's been hard off and on, but I also keep getting better at it, and now any potential competitors that come along are going to find themselves facing off against a human dynamo.

3: I haven't figured out what #3 is yet. I've pretty much just done the first two. What comes next depends too much on the individual and their business and their market, so it's impossible to come up with one rule that works for everyone. Having tried out a couple of different business "coaches", I've found them to be completely unhelpful. So: nobody should be telling you what to do, least of all me.
That's how one usually sees it, but really a disclaimer is just "a statement that denies something, especially responsibility". So one could read the grandparent as 1) denying that he works for them 2) denying that he would know as much about the service as someone who did, and 3) denying that he has any conflict of interest that would call his assessment of the service into question.
Sarcasm... The 'Mac Tablet' that has been rumored forever is an Apple version of the TabletPC. He claimed to have a 'crude version' of a the rumored 'Mac tablet.' It's hard to have that when the Mac tablet's main feature is a touchscreen. I doubt the Dell netbook has a touchscreen. Ergo, he does not have a 'crude version' of such a device unless your definition of 'crude' includes 'missing the most important feature.'
Thanks for pointing me to this. I had heard of the Singularity University, but not the summit.

Hopefully they have videos posted online of the event...right now two months rent is not available to spend on a conference, very unfortunately.
EC: I don't think there's a connection between computation and consciousness. Examine other species for the line of consciousness and the line of computation. Does it count if something computes without intent, like a spider approximating a minimum spanning tree? I'm not sure, but I don't see it yet.
How to buy a domain
"Tranfering files through usb is more like magic."

It sounds like you have a major problem with your install. I use Ubuntu daily and never experienced anything close to it. My biggest problem is to remember what package to download to make my Atheros wireless work again.

And what's the pain in middle-button-dragging the bars to wherever you want them to be?
"In the end, I had a crude version of the Mac tablet computer that the rumor mill always says is just around the corner."
I'll bet they do but they can only detect the most obvious cases. It would be possible for website to sell links that even a human couldn't identify as sold, so there are limits to what their algorithms could achieve.
humans are unique in the universe among all life forms and inanimate objects, are more than the sum of their physical parts, have a connection with something larger than the universe, and though in an insignifcant corner of an insignificant galaxy have an eternal significance.
If you define humans as machines - automated creatures based on input and output, then yes. However there is this thing called qualia (aka subjective experience) that I believe is very real. Machines are not capable of this. All of the AI today is based on complex algorithms with an input output model. There is nothing subjective going on inside.
I agree that simulation is the key to a concious AI system. If or when we ever succeed in simulating a human mind to a close enough degree of comparability, it is almost a given that the system will be self concious.

There are some problems simulating the human brain that would also have to be addressed even once we can create a working system, such as the AI being a bit of a blank slate, like a infant or a coma patient.

I see the whole process as having to follow a path similar to this:

1. A breakthrough in computing power, something capable of simulating very accurately small areas of space, this means perfectly representing ridiculously complicated chemical reactions and some natural laws.

2. Succeeding in creating a software environment to execute these simulations within.

3. A breakthrough in mapping an existing person, some sort of scan that creates a mathematically provable perfect (or close enough) representation of an area in space. Like some humans mind or possibly their entire body until the subject of the scan can be simplified on the computer. Sort of like taking a photo and then cropping off the body. The above simulation environment may be what is used to provide the simulated inputs and outputs to the head, like the CNS and cardiovascular system. Not to mention the inputs to the eyes and other senses. Sort of like a virtual head in a jar.

4. So far we would have a conscious system, but it would be a copy of a pre-existing being. The next step would to be to somehow, ethically, re-write this being. This would provide a learning challenge with the goal of simplifying and modularising the human brain. Such as hacking language areas, input nerves, the reliance on virtual blood and sustenance and most importantly the memory.

The final product of this important stage is the most simple and easily tweak-able simulation of the human brain that could be used by all researchers and eventually commercial applications. If all these virtual brains are the same or comparable, this isolates the memory as a way to load in or edit what is essentially... people. The creepiest analogy may be the best, they will be like swappable save game files, executing in virtual machines (the hacked brains) that operate within another virtual machine (dare I say it, a super-simple matrix of sorts)

5. We may never reach anywhere near this far along the process due mainly to ethical reasons that cannot be overcome with mere ingenuity. But if we do, the next step is compressing all this down further and further until we have the most simple possible (perhaps provable somehow) implementation of a mind that does not require all the layers of virtualization.

God it's easy to get caught up in this stuff. I hold this prediction on my fingertips in hopes that any developments may blow it away so I can re-evaluate and make a new one.
GitHub Contest Winners
I prefer Linux.
Why did this get any votes? The information boils down to "you can install OS X on a netbook with some effort", which surely is very old news?

Is it enough to sport the word "Hack" in the title to get on Hacker News?
People who actually want to learn have been doing it in the library, study hall, or in their own dorm room. You can't learn most of the hard sciences, or even the humanities, from online. You have to do it in a lab, or read the hard copy/visit the site/examine the artifacts.

CS you can learn online. Math you can learn online. Everything else, offline trumps the shit out of online, and it always will.
I don't usually like techcrunch but this hit the spot for me. Itunes is broken for my (simple) needs. A 'lite' option that is basically a file manager would be very welcome.
Pictures like these bother me because I don't know which have been manipulated (brightness, contrast, color, etc), for public consumption or to highlight certain features for study. Anybody know if there are unaltered images from Hubble? I'm talking about the true visible light spectrum ones (if there are any).
There is also commercial application compatibility. Windows is king, but OS X is still light years ahead of linux. Netflix and iTunes are two apps that come to mind. I want to use them, but not bad enough to boot Windows. Hacking OS X to work on my PC is probably easier than teaching my family how to make VirtualBox run at full screen.
So I'd like to hear what people would actually DO with a mac tablet....

Are you going to use it like an oversized iPod? Type large documents with the touchscreen? Watch movies? Read books?

I took Spindler's comments during the presentation as a thinly veiled message of "look, the iPod touch/iPhone can do most of what you want here, so don't hold your breath for a tablet".

Then again, that's usually a sign there's one around the corner...
@nwatson - That is a religious belief. It may not be a conventional religious belief, but it is a religious belief. Not to dismiss all religions (although, as an atheist, I tend to), but more to note that the GGP had pointed out that he assumed no religious belief.
My favorite tilling WM http://wmii.suckless.org/ You can configure it with any scripting language but the downside is the help is lacking compared to the IRC community for XMonad and awesome.
I wouldn't take it personally. Ubuntu made a specific effort to improve the Linux end-user experience, and they've pretty much succeeded. In the process, their rapid rise to popularity has pushed a bunch of the other distributions into making their systems more homogenized, so Linux has really gotten a lot better for the end-user in the last decade.

That said, OpenBSD is probably the most organized project out of all open source projects close to the same size and scope. They release like clockwork, they do not (or try not to) rush new features out just so they can make the next release, and there really is an uncompromising drive for perfection.

I would love to contribute code to the project, but I have to be honest: though I'm by no means a slouch programmer, those guys seriously outclass me, and I'd be completely out-of-my-league.

Having perused bits of Linux source from time to time, I don't feel that's so much the case outside of OpenBSD.
It uses piezo actuators as the "legs", operating them at different phases to move in different directions. This was explained on the YC submission a few days ago:

http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/29/i-swarm-micro-robots-r...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795396
I think you're overcomplicating things a bit. They all play music and that's still what most people buy iPods for. You still have basically three categories of device: small size, mid-sized, large. The amount of storage space included mostly matches the physical size of the device. The extra features on different models isn't really that important. Seems like they just need to give owners of older models some reason to upgrade and it doesn't really matter that much what those features are.
He's defining a term. He doesn't need proof - though you're welcome to dispute his definition.
Depending on how you look at it, humans are machines.
Honestly, the 'genius' sidebar was one step over the boundary. It bogs down iTunes everytime it opens.

Now Facebook Integration? I just want to listen to music, and rip any cds I have left.
Bah....I call bullshit. This is pure anthropomorphism. Humans think they are the shit, but in fact they are only story-telling animals

The poster you are responding did not claim that humans are the shit. They merely pointed out the fact that we have so far proven incapable of proving that we aren`t said shit. Now, you could argue that such a hypothesis could only be falsified by the construction of a machine consciousness. That, however, is orthogonal to the fact that it remains possible that there is in fact some bizarre quality of the universe or the human race that makes machine consciousness impossible. Not a terribly scientific position to take, perhaps, but a perfectly sound philosophical one.
For those who say yes to the question then look at Simulated Reality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality
Having worked at Facebook...

... do they really want to see that code?
That's a feature of phkmalloc (written by Poul-Henning Kamp) that was brought forward into jemalloc (used by FreeBSD and Firefox/Windows, among others) and OpenBSD's malloc (written by Otto Moerbeek et al, borrowing from phkmalloc)

As cperciva already noted below, readlink() is one syscall, whereas reading and parsing a configuration file is many syscalls and much more code. This is malloc we're talking about here, not general purpose user-configurable software.
I must protest your lack of LaTeX/TeX use in your crummy paper. Knuth's line terminating algorithm has made me forever hate Word's aesthetics.
I think it's more interesting to ask whether computer emotions are possible. (Not merely the emulation of emotions.)

A simple definition of consciousness is the difference between being asleep (mostly oblivious to self) and awake (aware of self, environment, and relationship). Even then, a machine can negotiate terrain. But add emotions and you get potential for creativity (non-programmed, original output) which is a testable measure of sentience.

Consciousness can be faked. Original work can't - certainly not original work that 'touches people's souls'. Somewhere in there is a machine that earns my ungrudging respect. It's not a formula: it's a feeling.
Maybe he's a huge fan of Garage Band? I would love to see something like that for Linux - and Rosegarden ain't it.
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There might actually be a slim chance for a start-up attempting to differentiate actual friends. My solution was more extreme but works: I have <20 friends on Facebook, and remove people even if I'm their friend but don't particularly enjoy their Facebook page.