skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The real constraints we face are technological and economic, they say. We're limited not by the amount of oil in the ground, but by how inventive we are about reaching new sources of fuel and how much we're willing to pay to get at it.

This is exactly what the peak oil people have been saying, you can't claim they're "looking at it the wrong way" and then restate exactly what they were claiming. Peak oil was never about running out of oil, it was always about the rate and economics of extraction. "the size of the tap, not the size of the tank" etc.

This "recent boom" in the US remains cash negative - about 600b capex for about 500b in oil. And we don't know yet whether that's going to change.

Currently "geology is not only winning, it is crushing technology" http://blogs.platts.com/2014/07/30/peak-oil-forecasts/
most verboten slurs against group X, when unpacked, simply mean "I see you as X and I dislike X"

No, they don't mean just that. Most slurs against group X are "I see you as X, and I dislike X, and I want to prejudice people against X, reducing their opportunities". Hate speech is maligning a group to diminish them, and slander/libel is maligning an individual to diminish them.

There's not a lot of nuance, just a total ordering, from more free speech, to less.

This implies that 'free speech' is a sliding scale. It's not - it's polyvariate. Hence, nuance.

Edit: example: "You can say anything, you just can't criticise the king" versus "You can say anything, you just can't copy a company's mascot". Which of these two is "less free speech" than the other? How do you measure that? Does the king have more power over your life than companies do? Do you want to criticise the king more than you want to make a derivative work of Mickey?
> Your implementation of momentum seems off

I think we used what is described in Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach... But I have to check because what you propose seems better.

> If you want to get an output class probability, softmax is the standard way. Minimize KL-divergence instead of squared error.

Thanks! We'll totally try that.

> You don't seem to be doing any regularization. It could maybe give you better generalization.

Thanks again. Someone mentioned that before as well. We'll have to experiment with that as well.

> Training on multiple threads and averaging is a nice touch. It would be interesting to hear if (how much) it improved your results.

Training was much faster and therefore tractable on a much larger set but we didn't manage to get our best results using this multi-threaded approach unfortunately as described in the post.

Maybe with a bigger training set we could have reach better results using multi-threaded training. That being said, the averaging phase disrupts a lot the overall backpropagation process, so I don't know how efficient it can be... Some advanced experimentation would probably be interesting here.
Slightly average body temperature, probably. I tend to get bitten a lot more than the people around me and run about half a degree above the 98.6 average normally. Good news is - the more you get bit, the less time the itch lasts for as you develop a bit of tolerance to it.
Lex() for my HolyC compiler looks in the symbol table for each identifier. The symbol table for the compiler is a hash table, you fucken nigger. Go learn what a fucken hash table is.
Ajax-form: HTML forms on steroids, harnessing the power of web components
Backup the species before deleting them in case there is an unforeseen dependency? Pretty clever failsafe, actually!
Both iOS and Android use SQLite. That means billions of devices have SQLite on them. That makes SQLite the most popular implementation of SQL.
See:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/cocoa/...
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/database/sqli...
> As far as I can tell, there was no regulation before the 2005 open internet regulations.

Before around 2005 there was competition. Regardless of who your phone company was you could get internet access from AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, Earthlink or any number of local hole in the wall ISPs with a couple of T1s and a bank of modems. Those companies had every intention of leasing DSL and cable lines in the same way they traditionally leased phone lines.

This is what changed in 2005:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Cable_%26_Telecommunic...

The FCC decided that broadband ISPs didn't have to lease their lines to competitors, which essentially killed all of the competitors.

We can have a competitive market with little regulation. We can have a monopoly with strong regulation. What we absolutely cannot allow is a monopoly with little regulation.
Your first paragraph gives a great demonstration why the GP post thinks that most conversations about peak old "disasters" are silly, and your second paragraph and third paragraphs admit as much, despite you leading off with it not being so unbelievable.

Your comment basically reads "Peak oil isn't ridiculous if you believe the entire globe is so unaware of what they're individually doing that they're going to run out of oil without any warning their own wells are going dry, because the wells aren't operated collectively, so we require ALL the operators do this at the same time in the same manner. Also, there isn't going to be a decades long transition because all of these people are on exactly the same schedule because... er.... Also! No one will switch to other power to lower the demand on in-the-ground oil because as I just said, it'll all happen at the same time incredibly fast."

I mean, I guess you're welcome to believe it, but it relies on several facts that just aren't true, and is too simple of a model to fit if those facts are included.
Current oil price (NYMEX): $94.57. It was in the $20-$40 range for most of the 1990s. (All numbers inflation-adjusted.) For "new oil", that's near the price of extraction too, not markup from Saudi Arabia. We hit "peak cheap oil" a while back.
How can 1904 + 2^31 seconds = 2010 when 1970 + 2^31 seconds = 2038?
In theory future's markets can help regulate prices to avoid harmful price trashing. However, evidence suggests even without peak oil markets create 'false' price spikes. Which is where futures market's are useful. If your farm/factory can setup a futures contract with an airline then you can remain profitable for a while even if the price falls.
Does this remind anyone else of Peter Thiel's notes on value systems? The entire time, I was thinking about how Peter was emphasizing that finding the right size market was key. Too big, and the competition erodes your profit away. The higher level tiered companies had to face much more competition, and Apple utilized that by having them compete with each other.

If you are interested in learning more about this, I highly recommend reading Economics of Strategy as it talks about the benefits and costs of being horizontally and vertically integrated. There are also some good anecdotes on how one can obtain economic profits, which reflects the opportunity cost of a venture, compared to accounting profit which just takes into account the total profits, through various forms such as competitive advantages.

Value Systems: http://blakemasters.com/post/20955341708/peter-thiels-cs183-...

Economics of strategy: href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/111827363X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=...
> Pointers are guaranteed to have LSB of zero

Except pointers to functions in ARM thumb. Or more simply pointers inside strings.
Alternative? Do tell.
Cursive handwriting, when done with proper technique, is faster than block and does not cause hand cramps or wrist pain.
Ask HN: Will being self-employed hurt my employability?
I'm considering becoming self-employed for a stint to bootstrap an idea that has gotten a lot of positive feedback from individuals who have tried it. Essentially, planning on picking up contract work and using that to fund the development of the idea. Should I be concerned about this hurting my future full time employability if it doesn't work out?
> something that's still perfectly functional

More functional, sometimes; I have 10.6.8 on my home Mac Pro because 10.7 removed a vital feature.
I've been wondering about exactly this - the agreed upon blockchain problem. Why not localized meshnets based on Hyperboria (http://hyperboria.net/). It can solve the problems of trusted blockchain - but you still have the social problem of interloper.
yes it's not very hard to jam, there are many jammers available online, a top result in a quick search was ironically from a site called jammerfromchina.com...[1]
Also, with an alfa wireless card and python (scapy module) it can be done pretty easily [2].

[1] http://www.jammerfromchina.com/categories/WiFi%7B47%7DBlueto...
[2] https://github.com/DanMcInerney/wifijammer
You don't see the difference between running an exploit to check if you're vulnerable to a security bug, and running software provided by your upstream distribution?
In a mock trial and execution, the victim can at least be clearly identified. A drone's eye view typically does not allow it's target to be positively identified by facial recognition. To make matters worse, the U.S. has admitted that they assume any adult males in the vicinity of someone they think is a terrorist are terrorists as well, unless evidence proves them innocent.

Executioners are precise. Drones are indiscriminate killers. Executioners work within the law. Drones work outside of it. What kind of executioner would willingly kill dozens of unidentified innocents to get at one possible suspect? Drones fill a role closer to that of a death squad than an executioner.
I think that, if we can, we should completely and entirely get the world rid of mosquitoes (and tsetse flies as well if possible). Several species have become extinct in the world's history -- in fact far more species have gone extinct than extant today. Diminishing mosquitoes to EW (Extinct in the Wild) status would save millions of human lives.

Malaria isn't the only disease spread by mosquito. Mosquitoes are responsible for transmitting several diseases. The "aedes aegypti" species of mosquito doesn't spread malaria, but several other debilitating diseases including dengue fever, chikungunya, yellow fever, etc.
I just see it from the other point of view. I see it as being too early to say that he was wrong.

The article seems way too harsh on someone who made a prediction over 50 years ago that has stood the test of time flawlessly. He was objectively correct when looking at actual data.

The only counter point actually given in the article to peak oil is that it might be theoretically possible for production to beat those 1970's levels which isn't much of a counterpoint.
Has anyone actually used this? It was posted to HN the other day and didn't not seem to receive positive feedback.

Most of the users profiles I have clicked on seem pretty boring. I fail to see what is so attractive about it.

I definitely am taking the owners claim of "31,000 requests an hour" with a grain of salt.

Honestly, does the average person even care about being advertised to, or having their data mined? I have never heard anyone outside of tech circles even talk about it.
In 1994, a chemistry professor told me with a grave expression, that "we have more than enough coal to destroy the world." My current concern is that we're now in a gold rush to extract fossil fuels before it inevitably must be stopped.
id say it works perfectly
Ask HN: What is the highest number of browser tabs you have ever had open?
Just curious what your records are on number of tabs, maybe also your average tabs or how many tabs you have open at the moment. Also curious on the people with high counts, what kind of setup you are running...
Internetfactchecking.com
As a pedagogical exercise, to help me understand the design, I wrote some Go code to read a sqlite database and dump table contents. I remember having to peek at the source code to figure out a few things that weren't explained well in that document.

I'd previously written code to read the lucene database format (python code that time), which was also a good learning experience. I ended up leveraging some of that knowledge for a work project.

And I've also played around with reading/writing git archives.
It never hurt me, back when I was applying for honest jobs (self employed now). Whether or not I worked for other people, I was always doing things I knew would advance my career.
> get a cracked Adobe CSx

- What about when Adobe makes a change when going CS2 => CS3 that I don't like, or that is detrimental to me? If I 'own a copy' I can just continue using it. With 'CS in the cloud' I have to upgrade because that's what Adobe wants.

- To step outside of software for a second, what happens when (e.g.) George Lucas decides that the "special edition" version of Star Wars is the 'real one' and replaces all cloud copies of Star Wars with the special edition version?
Shouldn't he just identify as some recent version of Tor Browser?
Remove Bloatware from Your Rooted Android Device
How did they move a C++ code with a GUI toolkit running an event loop from OS7? How do they weeks spent optimizing each C++ function translate to the web? Is this a complete rewrite? The technical details are mind boggling.
T-Mobile sends its customers a free Wi-Fi router… see what happens next
Initial Thoughts on the BodyGuardz ScreenGuardz Pure for iPhone 6
I take half-hour showers; longer on the weekend. It's a decent way to unwind.

Don't worry, I'm not using Californian water. ;)
Crude oil actually has peaked (note the chart including shale/tar sands/LNG), it's just that the demand has been offset both by the ongoing global recession and the growth of other sources.

However, I still have a hard time seeing this as a sustainable path forward. In energy terms it may give us enough time to transition to renewable sources, but the main sources of remaining new carbon are tar sands, fracked shale, and deep-water/arctic drilling, all of which have huge and increasing opposition from local citizens and environmentalists, all of which have a far worse EROEI than traditional crude oil plays, and especially in the case of fracking appear to have absurdly short well lifetimes.

All of this combines I think to demand a fair amount of skepticism for the idea that these alternate sources of carbon can long offset the ongoing peak and eventual decline of crude oil - the EROEI if nothing else seems to metaphysically fuck the idea of transitioning increasing portions of our energy needs to those sources.
The difference here is that you actually had a copy of the data. If the vendor (e.g. Microsoft) decides to lock you in, they will keep the data in the cloud, with their app being the only access point. Then, locally you will only have a copy of "application state" at any point in time.
Peak oil--in the sense of Hubert's peak--is a perfectly good robust estimator of conventional oil reserves.

Anyone who does robust [] estimation for a living (me, say) looked at it and said, "Yeah, that makes sense." A lot of people who have never produced an accurate estimate of anything said, "That proves we're all doomed!" and "That's clearly wrong!" both of which are wildly inaccurate.

You point out the steep price curve of liquid petroleum as if that made things OK, but in economic terms, ten years ago, it was the cause for concern: when conventional oil started to get scarce, prices would go up. We knew that. But the new equilibrium price of fuel would depend on what alternatives were technologically* practical, and it wasn't clear that unconventional oil was going to live up to its hype. If it had stuck us with $250/bbl oil due to technological limitations, the economic hit would have been considerable, even if over a decade or two the price came down due to technological improvements. I'm emphasizing technology here because anyone reading this should realize that it can take rather a long time to go from "yeah this is basically feasible" to production at scale.

With hindsight we now know we are OK, but again: ten years ago unconventional oil was not ready for prime time, and it wasn't obvious it ever would be. Boosters within the industry were claiming that it would be ready to go Real Soon Now, but there were skeptics in industry as well, and therefore it behooved those of us on the sidelines to be a little bit concerned.

[*] Robust estimates are not the most accurate, but the least influenced by extraneous factors, special assumptions, etc. They are by far the best way to go when estimating highly uncertain things (like software delivery schedules) because they are the most difficult to game.
There are droughts and droughts. Some suspect a 150 years drought led to the collapse of Maya civilization.

> Our results show rather modest rainfall reductions between times when the Classic Maya Civilization flourished and its collapse -- between AD 800-950. These reductions amount to only 25 to 40 per cent in annual rainfall. But they were large enough for evaporation to become dominant over rainfall, and open water availability was rapidly reduced. The data suggest that the main cause was a decrease in summer storm activity

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120223142455.ht...

> Studies of] Yucatecan lake sediment cores ... provide unambiguous evidence for a severe 200-year drought from AD 800 to 1000 ... the most severe in the last 7,000 years ... precisely at the time of the Maya Collapse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Maya_collapse#Drought_t...
I'd like to improve the document so that reference to the SQLite source code is not required. Can you explain (perhaps via private email) what the file format document did not describe sufficiently for you to implement a reader in Go?
Ahh, yep. The POC was definitely from server to client, not the other way around. A huge concern for Linux laptops then.
> a compromise would perhaps be to allow at least reified primitive generics so that List<int> would be a proper runtime type whereas List<Object> would be the runtime version of all reference types in List<T>.

This is actually pretty much exactly what the .NET runtime does. All value types get a separately-JIT'd version of the type, while all reference types share the same Object-based version. See section on implementation here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms379564(v=vs.80).as...
The people I talk to outside of tech circles care very muhc about privacy and having their data sold. But it's one dimensional to think about the average person when talking about Ello, or any other service. Why can't Ello just be a service for the not-average people who do care about their privacy?
Andy Baio wrote a small piece exploring Ello's funding and hypothesizing that their bluster about not selling your data/running ads is worth about as much as Livejournal's was: https://ello.co/waxpancake/post/oy73kFfDdhOPh8Jv9z9pFA
Step-by-step guide to customer-centered product design, brought to you by IDEO
I guess there's markets everywhere. That said, I lift fairly seriously, and the article repeats something silly:

Participants say geek-themed fitness programs are less intimidating than
big-box gyms, and more empathetic. Among the biggest reasons people don't
join a gym is a fear of feeling intimidated or out of place.

Being judged by the toned-and-tanned gym crowd is a real concern for many
people, says Collin Anderson, a personal trainer who manages the "Cos-fit"
Facebook page with workouts for people who dress in superhero and other
costumes.

"A lot of us may have some residual issues toward jocks," says Mr. Anderson,
who lives in Renton, Wash.

I've been going to gyms daily for more than a decade. If you're thinking of starting a training program, know that most of your fellow gym goers will ignore you. On the chance they aren't ignoring you, it's most likely because they're waiting for equipment you're using, or you're being obnoxious (talking on your phone, leaving puddles of sweat, not racking weights when you're done.) Seriously. Most people are just there to get a workout and don't have any time to bother others. Just go regularly, and in 6 months, you'll look like you belong there too.
Parent poster mis-recalled details.

The bug is 30-bit signed ints (29bits) with epoch 1993.
Go: Or How I Came to Love Static Types
A simple Node.js CLI tool to easily download programming ebooks
Two Teenagers Walked into an Apple Store and Bent an iPhone 6 Plus
Yeah one of the problems with Ello is that there's no real guarantee that they won't eventually start selling/mining/advertizing or that they won't be bought by a company that will.

Diaspora had the right philosophy.
I completely forgot about Hacker League! I must have unsubscribed because majority of the events were for students. I might check them out again. Ive never heard of ChallengePost, thanks for the suggestion
Yes, it's a wonder how civilization survived with all this "bad" code floating around.
I have not heard of hackathon.io. what a simple name!
I can't help but think of the arrested development scene. "Dozens, there are dozens of us!" It's like the cool party, if everyone goes it's like Project X, if only a few go, it's not a party. I want what Facebook used to be, no bs, just friends.
Both OS's. I want to tell my laptop "this is me" and tell my phone "this is me" (say by using the same iCloud account or whatever) and then they just have the same clipboard. When I copy something on laptop, I can paste on all my devices, and vice-versa.
> "While burning fossil fuels may have a negative effect on climate, is that effect so bad that we should abandon them?"

Not yet. But the benefits you list all took effect long before the downsides, as with most forms of pollution. That short-term reasoning has worked so far, but we're pretty sure that it's starting to fall apart. Pretty soon we're going to be burning increasing amounts of oil to mitigate the effects of burning too much oil, and there aren't a whole lot of ways that can play out. Those shrill predictions from the 60s and 70s were ultimately wrong about how the shape of the supply curve for oil would evolve, but they also completely failed to consider the possibility that using oil could reduce reserves of natural resources other than oil. That's something we now know to be worth worrying about.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/01/power_and_the...

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/the_battle_fo...

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/privacy_and_p...
I haven't used Photoshop (and will never subscribe to any Adobe software) in over a year because there are plenty of alternatives that meet my needs, and web/graphics design is my lively-hood.

Between Sketch, Pixelmator, and just designing in CSS/HTML I do not need Photoshop.

I haven't been hampered by DRM, subscriptions, or anything else with these apps/technologies and that is because personal computing is alive and well.
Standing next to the thing makes you feel like an ant. I visit it once and a while and I just think to myself "we did this, this thing blasted off of the face of the earth with humans at the top"
> I also find it suspicious that this article emphasizes how much buy-in LTE Direct has from gigantic corporations

The last line of the article is the submarine:
"Wireless carriers might even gain a new stream of revenue by charging companies that want to offer services or apps using the technology, Qualcomm says."

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
My account (@matiassingers) got some very interesting numbers, and most of my photos definitely do have a caption and hashtags.

PROBABILITY FEMALE: 0.003
PROBABILITY MALE: 0.001
I thought the peak oil people were saying we are running out of oil and that production would peak then decline relatively soon. If they were saying that prices would simply rise encouraging new technology to allow continuing increased production then I think they were very poor at communicating their ideas. More likely they actually believed what they were clearly saying: oil production would peak in X years.

See for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06peak.html