skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Dr. George Ellis speaks about physicists that knock philosophy, while they themselves regularly engage in metaphysics.

[...] George F. R. Ellis, the physicist-mathematician-cosmologist, an authority on the Big Bang and other cosmic mysteries. [...]

Horgan: Lawrence Krauss, in A Universe from Nothing, claims that physics has basically solved the mystery of why there is something rather than nothing. Do you agree?

Ellis: Certainly not. He is presenting untested speculative theories of how things came into existence out of a pre-existing complex of entities, including variational principles, quantum field theory, specific symmetry groups, a bubbling vacuum, all the components of the standard model of particle physics, and so on. He does not explain in what way these entities could have pre-existed the coming into being of the universe, why they should have existed at all, or why they should have had the form they did. And he gives no experimental or observational process whereby we could test these vivid speculations of the supposed universe-generation mechanism. How indeed can you test what existed before the universe existed? You can’t.

Thus what he is presenting is not tested science. It’s a philosophical speculation, which he apparently believes is so compelling he does not have to give any specification of evidence that would confirm it is true. Well, you can’t get any evidence about what existed before space and time came into being. Above all he believes that these mathematically based speculations solve thousand year old philosophical conundrums, without seriously engaging those philosophical issues. The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy. As pointed out so well by Eddington in his Gifford lectures, they are partial and incomplete representations of physical, biological, psychological, and social reality.
I believe in knowledge, does that count? Seems to be quite the rarity around these parts called... "Earth"
We've given roughly $8k in the last 12mo
I've done something similar with Sphinx, which worked quite well too.

However, I feel the real challenge to productify such a technology would be to make this system recognise utterances spoken casually, over loud music, over friends talking in the background.

Also, how would the speech to text recognise the user's commands over some sound playing from its own speaker. Suppose I set up a text-to-speech system to read a book to me. I want to be able to make it repeat a paragraph (because my attention had drifted away). However, the input channel of the microphone would contain not only me shouting "stop", but also the output of the text-to-speech system.

We humans have a way of factoring out our own voice when we are listening to someone else. Is there a way to make machines do that?
I had concentrated on graphics when I studied computer science in college. That was 10 years ago and shaders weren't in common usage. To this day, I can still derive a rotation matrix from basic principles.

Yet learning GLSL has been surprisingly difficult. Either the resources available are the Khronos Group's shitty documentation, or tutorials of a different yet equal shittiness that go no further than spinning cubes.

So this sounds freaking amazing. Sign me up.
We are constantly improving how much we automate, but the major goal is to make sure that if manual work needs to be done, Aptible is doing it, not our customers.

Preparing training materials is a good example. Each of our customers get three types of training: basic HIPAA privacy and security training for everyone; developer training, specific to their stack; and security officer training. We customize that training. We may modularize it later, but only if we can maintain the quality and experience.

We spend as much time with each customer as they want, but we don't bill for support and we don't bill for consulting. At first it seems higher-priced than some options, but there are no hidden costs.
You can be an Agnostic Atheist.

Agnosticism is about whether you believe you can prove the existence of God or not. Atheism and Theism is about actual belief in God.

One can be an Agnostic Atheist or Agnostic Theist.
Agnostic atheist= I don't know whether we can prove God exists but I don't believe in God

Agnostic theist= I don't know where we can prove the God exists or not but I do believe in God.

Being an agnostic is not the "I'm not really sure" category people have made it to be.
Then closer the buffer. I've only opened it by accident. To use Vim I can't "disable" modes and only into modes by accident, I am forced to use them.

So no, emacs is not modal like Vim. But good try, good try...

Besides, why not use speedbar, that opens a nice directory browser and you can open files by clicking on them.
I can't imagine a scenario where this could be viewed as not infringing, yet I'm not holding my breath. Even if it were found to be infringing, I have little hope the NSA would stop dragnet-like behavior.

I keep hoping the water will get shut off to the datacenters across the valley.
I don't identify myself spiritually nor do I use it as any sort of litmus test in any community I am a part of.
What happens when someone gets a hole-in-one and then doesn't buy anyone anything? Are they kicked out? Are they shunned? Seems like an easy solution: don't do things for people when you get a hole-in-one.
So do Mormons get to check two boxes? Mormons are Christian.
The more common remap is probably capslock->ctrl, for both vim and emacs users, I but I definitely prefer capslock->escape. During normal operation, my left pinky rides the gap between a and escape(aka capslock). Pressing either requires the slightest of deflections to the left or right.

I keep escape as escape as well. Capslock is absolutely worthless to me.
That's not what agnostic means. Most people who believe in God wouldn't say they can prove God exists, and they aren't agnostic.
So, "Other"?
ZERO Jews? I'm surprised. (Disclaimer: I'm an atheist, born Jewish, and currently Jew-ish.)
Were they all projects your company uses internal? Through gittips?
Sometimes we make assumptions about a particular group of people and this poll seems like a great way to challenge those assumptions and take a closer look at who makes up the hacker news community.

HN polls haven't been trustworthy for years. Too many people giving too many false results. Pg noticed this when there was a poll asking about the age of HNers and a bunch of people responded with "Over 80." He mentioned he'd make their fonts extra huge so they'd still be able to read HN.
You can also be an Atheist Buddhist.
Having grown up in the church, I have honestly never found a good replacement for the sense of community and support that a church offers. Its a shame that no other non-religious organizations have been able to replicate it.
No, you can't be an agnostic atheist, there is no such thing.
It's amazing to me just how well some political factions in the US have indoctrinated the public to believe that the defense of the common good is some sort of threat to American values, which include, in theory the support and participation in your community.

It's gotten to the point where not even poor people are willing to listen or support many of the policies that promote their well being while not being a significant burden to anyone.
each corporation has a charter spelling out its aims. any agent of the corporation is compelled to further those aims. many charters principally aim to maximize monetary profits but not all.
I believe that there is commonality between referents for the term 'god'. I believe that there is wisdom to be found in most religious systems of belief. I call myself omnignostic.
Mormons are Christian in the same way that Muslims are Christians and Christians are Jews, though.
Really, only one other Buddhist? I guess that makes sense with only 13 Christians as of this posting. I took the precepts, don't know that I particularly consider myself religious but I still subscribe enough to check the little up arrow.

Edit: nevermind, poll took off;)

Edit 2: zenjzen, you also appear to be hellbanned.
I usually rest my palm naturally on the control key when using emacs (yes I use my palm to press the control key), so ctrl-n becomes just n for e.g.

Yes it's hard to get started, but once you get the hang of it navigation in emacs just becomes so painless.

Also it's hard or even impossible at first to do it on laptops but trust me you will be able to do it.
It was refreshing to see something like this on HN. I'll have to look into it. Thanks!
Wikipedia, for one, would beg to differ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism#Types_of_agnosticis...
Right, and I would describe myself as an agnostic Christian. The claims of Christianity are ridiculous and unprovable, and I believe them.
I would contest that any communal group that meets face to face regularly develops similar bonds and that this is not exclusive of spiritual gatherings.

I think over the past few generations we have lost more of those reasons to get together, and church is one of the last hanger-ons of these close knit communities.
Christianity and Judaism are considered separate religions. So, I don't think Mormons are technically Christians or Jewish despite using both of there religious texts.

Or if they are then I think Muslims might also qualify as they also believe in Judaism + Christ + one more prophet. Though depending on who you ask they might require Jesus to be part of the holy trinity and not just another prophet.

PS: Granted, I think the general stance with most people is simply let religions self identify as plenty of religious debates end up with one side killing the other.
I would work on an open eco-system for managing ebook libraries. Start reading a book on your eink ereader at home. Later you're stuck in a queue at the bank, so you pull out your phone and pick up where you left off. That sort of thing.
No, that is exactly what it means. It doesnt take very long to look something up (eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism ).

Agnosticism is not about being uncertain, it's the position that the answer is unknowable or unknown - which is much stronger than merely being uncertain.
I chose "other" because even though I do believe in God and follow the teachings of Jesus, I don't align myself with modern Christians who seem determined to be the opposite of what he taught. Hate, especially irrational, pointless hate, is something I simply don't understand and don't want in my life. I know a lot of it is politics instead of faith, but that's no excuse; in fact that makes it even more despicable.
I didn't know income inequality harms the top 0.1% too. This is giving me hope that this issue will be fixed in the United States.
Antitheist
Mormons do call themselves Christian. http://www.mormon.org/faq/mormon-christian

Many mainstream Christian religions disagree, citing various conflicts with Christian doctrine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormonism_and_Christianity#Chr...

In any case we could get bogged down in definitions and semantics, but if you come down on the side that Mormons are Christian, they are still probably the most interesting subset to break out into their own subcategory.
The one scientologist is a troll, right?

.... right?
He did say to comment, you know.
I don't understand why people want to do this in Vim. To me, a text editor should be extremely good at text editing / analysis and nothing else.

I use tmux, so all the advanced functionality of the terminal is only a single keypress away (to switch to another open terminal split).
Sikh!
"Oxfam estimates that the richest 85 people in the world own half of all wealth."
This is not what Oxfam's estimates say, it contradicts them. Here is the original quote:
"The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world."
The UK corporate tax rate is lower, 21% vs 35% in the US.
I'm an atheist buddhist.
Inevitably any internet thread about religion has the "what does agnostic mean" argument. It's dumb, nobody cares. People who call themselves agnostic usually do so because they are too scared to call themselves atheist for whatever reason. (Fear of religious friends judging them, fear of losing pascal's wager, etc.) Or because they think they are clever and think atheists are foolish for asserting there is no God with such certainty. (When in fact the burden of proof lies elsewhere.)

These people should just suck it up and call themselves atheists.
The idea of religious engineers has always been one that fascinates me.
> He mentioned he'd make their fonts extra huge so they'd still be able to read HN.

Shit, I'd be happy about this on mobile. HN on mobile Chrome is just painful :'(
Might want to try a humanist gathering.
I put 'Other' for a different reason, but my mother is 100% Ashkenazi Jew.
I humbly suggest that you simply haven't found them yet.

As an example, I understand that AA meetings foster a very supportive community atmosphere.

My local Linux User Group meets regularly and has a very friendly homely feel where you can bring in whatever problem you're working on and people are always happy to at least hear you explain it even if they can't help.

Meetup.com is a very good place to find meet-ups in your area which is a great place to start :)
That's really not true. The official title of the Mormon church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Christ is central to the religion, and is certainly not viewed merely as a prophet.
Deist might be a more useful alternate choice than Agnostic then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism
One of the key differences between Christianity and Mormonism is their classification of Jesus. Where a Morman would say that Jesus is the son of God, a Christian believes that Jesus is God incarnate.
"I used to be an atheist until I realized I was god." - J. Krishnamurti

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism
There are always a lot of confident assertions (on all sides) when it comes to this issue, but not a lot of hard facts. It's really difficult to know what to believe, and it's almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion because people get so emotional about it.
If you're reading "competition" as a license to be an asshole to team members, then we agree, but think that point is banal.

Otherwise, I reject this argument. I see it as mostly waving off gender concerns. "Let's not address our broken perceptions about the capabilities of women, but instead think about how we can rework the entire fabric of the industry." I'm sure everyone's going to get right on that.
What a bummer for the people who believe that; the US won't be sending humans out of LEO ever again.
All you need to need to know is that Piketty did his voluminous analysis in Excel.
Now just waiting to do an analysis on what to do with this data?
So for a kid from a poor neighbourhood (who's more likely to be black), getting a good job with a decent salary and benefits is a great success already and running a startup is too risky so there's less incentive.

For starting and running a startup, maybe, but those forces are much less in effect when the upper classes are doing the hiring. As we see at a lot of these companies, they aren't really reaching very far outside of their cohort. Cue the culture-fit debate.
You have a point, but the person you're responding to makes a more important one - the colloquial definition of agnostic, in reference to religion, is a person who's not sure what they think about the existence of gods. When you call yourself an agnostic, that's what people typically understand by it.
I was a part of a car enthusiast group that was incredibly close as well.

You just need to find common ground and work from there.
How to automatically list your Android music apps when headphones are plugged in
Out of curiosity, what would a correctly designed storage engine do to get better throughput than mmap()ing files?
That seems too long winded.

I understand your point that "girls" might have a connotation of disrespect. As if they're young and immature. But I think it's a slight connotation.

Given the context, of me pointing out that girls are being mistreated and that I think we should treat them better, I think the connotation is negligible. In other contexts I could see "girls" being disrespectful, but I don't think it is in this one.

With that said, maybe I'm being too stubborn. I often protest trivial things like this. For the record, if the case were reversed, I would absolutely be using the term "boys".

Edit: Also, I think the big thing is that I don't think of people in their mid-twenties as "adults" (men/women). I'm 21 and I'd refer to a friend of mine as "a guy I know" or "a girl I know".
>These people should just suck it up and call themselves atheists.

Boy, look at you telling people what and how they should believe.

I'm agnostic because I don't know if there exists a God, and couldn't care less when it comes to the day to day affairs of my life.
No recognition for the Church of Emacs?!
I'm not sure that I agree with that interpretation --if you stand on the street and say "free hugs for Georges", and I say "I'm a George", has fraud occurred? I guess that I mean --is any misrepresentation, even in the absence of a contract, a (legal) fraud?
Even better, try biologist creationists. They exist!
Right, so what you're saying is you're an atheist. It's okay. There are a lot of us.

I don't know if there is a teapot orbiting the Earth, but I wouldn't invent weasel words to distinguish between subtle groups of people who have varied opinions around the likely absence of said teapot. Especially not if most of the population believed strongly in the existence of said teapot.

edit: Also I'm not telling anyone how to believe, I'm just saying that people using the term agnostic as some way to contrast themselves with atheists either don't understand the term atheist, have an aversion to it or fear of using it to label themselves, or have some unsettled self-reflection to do on their existence because they secretly believe in a God but don't want to admit it. When you say you're an atheist you are saying you do not share the belief in God that most of the human population does. It's pretty simple.
Sorry, but designNERD is right.

Agnosticism has the greek root "gnosis", which means "knowledge". It's technically defined as a view that some things ("God" being a common, but not sole example) are unknowable. It's an epistemological concept.

Theism has the greek root "theos", meaning "God". Its primary concern is with the actual existence of God, so it's an ontological concept.

It's possible to think of agnosticism as side-stepping the theism debate by saying, "the nature of knowing matters more to me than the nature of being," but they're definitely compatible. You can say that the existence of God is unknowable (agnosticism,) but you believe that He's still out there (theism.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theism
Other - Using standard nomenclature in a non-standard way I'd call myself a "Spiritual Atheist."

I had been an atheist of the "cold" variety: life spontaneously arose from non-life in an undefined fashion, and everything relevant to the conversation evolved from this first life.. only the "observable" could be real.

Seemingly non-local consciousness-connections (a dream where something bad happens to someone and they die that night, you think of someone in that moment they call you, esoteric initations into new-agey meditation [law of attraction, remove viewing], they way the universe seems to be inscrutably "nicer" to me the more buddha-like it is [e.g. when regularly meditating])

The reasons my metaphysics changed are nearly ineffable; and are certainly not objectively verifiable (at least by me). The ramifications are easy to grok:

- The universe is a holy playground
- The universe has some sort of intention
- The more your intentions fall in line with the intentions of the universe, the more satisfying life is.

There are also some non-obvious (but ultimately important) "actionable" ramifications: primarily that sometimes the best way to solve a corporeal problem is to get the spiritual aspect (ie, the interface between you and the universe) in line.
I meant your "Advanced quickstart with AWS" on the front page. I can follow what it does, but I expect it's not obvious to many people.
The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon
Poll: How do you use CoreOS?
HN: How do you use CoreOS?
They probably should have offered mutually exclusive categories such as Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Mormon, and "Other Christian" so that the inevitable argument over "is ____ really Christian?" could have been avoided. Sigh.
In order to get a BAA with Amazon you need to use dedicated instances. BAAs are required in order to use Amazon and be compliant with HIPAA. Running any dedicated instances in a zone costs $2/hr (just for the right).
"Theist" should be a choice. I believe in god/a god, perhaps (likely?) not a knowable one.
Consulting is like selling crack (2011)
How come that there is no 'Feminist' option?

/ducks ...
Tired of using Calibre+Dropbox, there has to be a better way. I'm down to work as side-project, see contact in profile.
how about session vs entity beans? or applets? java tried hard to be that magical framework, but always fell squarely on the wrong side of complicated.
I feel like atheist and agnostic are too concrete.

I view it like non-Americans view thanksgiving. You can read the wiki page and it makes sense, but I'm not going to go out of my way to do it too. It's not really something that applies to me.
Considering the trail of idiocy and failure in tech, especially at C-Suite level, 'The industry must be competitive' is perhaps not a statement that overlaps with reality.

Competition is not a fetish. It's not a de facto solution that showers the world with good things. Quite often it makes people do unintelligent things for silly reasons.

It's actually a mythology. And it's perfectly fine to criticise blind adherence to it.

As for women in tech - I'm always fascinated that the pressure is one way. Why don't the fashion or beauty industries - which are hardly small or financially irrelevant - complain that so few men work in them?

I suppose there's a presumption that tech is very serious and important, and fashion and beauty are trivial, silly, and vapid.

Problem is, tech is often trivial, silly, and vapid too - as is a lot of business culture. How many products have been released that fundamentally fail to work? How many projects have veered off in surreal directions because innovation[tm]? How many episodes of Dilbert have there been now?

Perhaps it's the perception of seriousness and importance that's the real problem.

As a side note, fashion contributes around £26bn to UK GDP. It's very difficult to get hard facts how software compares, because the definition can include anyone selling anything from a website. But web design and app development on their own are much, much smaller.