skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
China does a good job in what it intends to do.

Most non-Chinese IP websites are not blocked but traffic gets slowed down by factor 40. I have an offshore webserver. A ping suggests a 50% packet loss.

Often you can access foreign websites. At least sometimes. Some days even gmail does work. Everything works sometimes or a little bit and or is unbelievable slow.

What I never understood with my self build SSH proxy VPN: China seems to be able to sniff on it. Facebook and Google were most of the time not working, even with the proxy. Maybe the 50% packet loss makes their websites non functional.

I just bought Astill VPN and for now I must say they are doing a tremendous job.
This Friday was the deadline for a big Computer Vision conference (CVPR), so effectively you're seeing what everyone has been working on over the last half a year :) Some authors choose to publish right away to arxiv, which is why you're seeing this influx right now. Some authors choose to upload to arxiv later, and some choose to never upload and wait for the whole review process to finish in some number of (long) months. I think the community is slowly deciding that the field and the ideas evolve too fast, much faster than the length of the review process. For example, I'm about to present my work from March at NIPS, happening in a few weeks. I've almost forgotten what I did, and I deprecated my NIPS model 3-4 times. It's not a chance to present cutting edge research, it's a chance to talk to your friends/colleagues and stand next to your poster awkwardly, trying to sell a model that you now know doesn't work very well.
New Relic – Synthetics
"And, for what it's worth, kids who live in the city can't exactly go play in the creek and ride their bikes. I wish they could, but they can't. It's not 20 or 30 years ago."

That's what I'm lamenting. What is this all for.

Almost all my friends' Moms were stay-at-home Moms, and I used to live in middle to upper-middle class neighborhood.
Sorry for the title, here is an abstract: http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys...
> MongoDB

Have you ever used SQL server and do you know what type of problems it aims to solve?
I actually agree w/ OP, the message seemed totally unclear to me, and I never saw that initial sentence.

I revisited the page and realized my eye was immediately drawn to the huge propaganda eagle, after which I jumped to the middle of the article and started skimming. Once again I missed the initial sentence. Had to intentionally look for it.
I found that interesting to, and straightaway noticed the high # of women participants - in fact that made me guess it was based in NYC before reading up on the background to the event and finding that it is indeed based there (which I hadn't heard of before). I thought it was sexual in an assured self-aware way rather than giggly or tacky.

I was especially struck by the egg-timer clock.
Two other HN discussions active.

This one links to a Pando post by Sarah Lacy, the journalist being threatened. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8622187

This one links directly to the Buzzfeed report. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8622003
It was up twice and disappeared

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8622003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8622088
And it _is_ a skill that you can improve with practice. Good luck!
I Took the Dalai Lama to a Ski Resort and He Told Me the Meaning of Life
This is interesting, because the size of a file's encrypted chunks now leaks information about the file's plaintext. I suppose you have some minimum chunk size, and that's one way to keep from leaking too much information as a fraction of the overall file size. But if a file is modified many times, it seems to me that you'd have to be very careful not to leak a substantial amount of data to a clever attacker.

Have you thought about how to quantify this tradeoff?

I suppose you could pad each encrypted chunk so they're all the same size, but then if you don't want to waste a ton of space you'd have to restrict your chunking algorithm to output chunks with relatively similar sizes, at which point you lose some of the benefits of chunking.
I think you'd be surprised - we are informed by certain awesome recruiters, but we've found that people generally feel most comfortable when talking to their peers about this stuff. There's a broad mistrust around recruiters.

One thing we could do is work with more recruiters more aggressively for data and guidance - ping them every conversation for example, instead of for larger industry trends. But we'll have to see if that could truly add value.
Here is a story I would like to share, about this game and its creator.

Months ago I came across this game called 2048 in HN, it's really popular fun game. Till now, I can see people playing it in subway all the time. I talked about this game in one of my social media timeline. One of my friends, my second startup's partner replied me. He told me their team created 1024, father of 2048. "Awesome!" isn't it? But this guy, Lans, didn't sound happy about the fact.

After some chat, I realized that they made this 1024 game from the idea of the game Threes, and the 2048 was created by a student who found 1024 interesting. However Lans' intention wasn't really for popularity or money, he is a serious dreamer. At that time, he and his partner Yop's young team was just founded, they wanted to build something elegant and fun. Lans likes the Threes, but it is not an easy game according to him, so he and Yop redesigned the game into 1024. They are a Chinese based team, HN isn't a language-friendly site for them. That's why when I suggested him to talk about it in HN, he said "it's fine, we can make something better anyway". Another thing made them upset was, I guess, some media or people think they were copycats. I just want say, do not overlook the work of simplifying and redesign, The addiction of 1024 or 2048 comes with reasons.

Today, Lans contacted me again, he told me that they just made another game, a better one. He wanted me to try it out and give some feedback. I tried, and again, I like it.

I think it is worth sharing, and I also want to help Lans and his team Veewo. Their efforts deserve to be acknowledged and encouraged. Hope you guys also enjoy this new game :)
I don't think these types of places are the ones you find on HN. They're more likely mom and pop places, family run and really just waiting to benefit from automation.

I did consulting at an HVAC company that had the vibe I am describing. I am not saying these positions are abundant, but if you check craigslist, depending on where you live, you might find these either under the software/QA jobs or under the computer gigs sections.
The AI Gold Rush: Deep Learning and the Exponential Progress of AI
Like how Apple, Google, Intel, Nvidia etc. are exploiting the LLVM project? IMO, the need for GPL style restrictive licences isn't backed up by facts; more open licences encourage commercial use and open development.
Great work! I'm a novice in the field of image recognition but do you think that using neural networks to represent both the text and image features in an h-dimensional embedding space could be extended to additional features like sound, or touch or images in other spectra like infra red? For example could we do better image recognition if there was also sound input from the scene or infra red in addition to visual spectra? It seems naively like lots of input data could be processed and then compared in this way. Thanks for taking the time to share your work and results.
This looks really useful!
The problem is they play up their "underdog being beat down by the bureaucrats and cab companies" (like a lot of other companies)

We should be shaming companies that try this, even if we like the disruption. People slinging shit at each other just lowers the standards for everyone, and makes everything slightly worse.
And still Colin Percival doesn't write a cross-platform Tarsnap GUI. He could do that just for fun, you know :-)
Looking for Web developer cofounder and investor
I'm not a coder or developer of any sort but I managed to put together a rudimentary site using a book and some online sources for a site I want to build. I'm looking for a web developer and investor(s) to get this site off the ground. I don't in any way claim to have the next billion dollar idea, but I do have a good idea and vision for what this site has potential to become. If you're either one of the person's I'm looking for and are willing to hear me out, let's talk. Worst case scenario, you think I'm delusional and you never see/hear me again. Best case scenario, you think I might be on to something and we continue the conversation. Thanks for your time!
Top trends of 2015: Plan to increase ecommerce conversion rate
Top 10 trends which will dominate ecommerce markets in 2015 are adding in customization of products, personality of brands and providing expert live recommendations. These steps will enhance your ecommerce income by bringing a change before your competitors. People all over the world endorse online shopping but are lacking personal touch. - See more at: http://bit.ly/1ygiSKJ
Planning 4th edition of Intro to Algorithms (CLRS), what should we add/remove?
If you run a mega-corp and are interested in donating to FreeBSD, please go right ahead. We can figure out how to deal with suspicions about influence later. ;-)
No one has an "off-the-record" event and invites people from the media. Just saying.
Eminent Harvard psychologist, mother of positive psychology, New Age quack?
Uber are not doing themselves any favours the last year or so, wow. Rather than sling words against a company that is already doing a great job at hurting their own image, there are tonnes of decent competitors in the ride sharing space that offer the same kind of service, if not better than what Uber are offering.

I recently tried out Lyft for the first time here in Seattle and I must say, it was a much more pleasant experience than I had previously had in my numerous Uber rides. Do not get me wrong, I have not had completely terrible Uber rides, but I have run into instances where Uber drivers have claimed to know shortcuts to get somewhere, only to find themselves lost all while the meter is running on quite a few occasions, I vote with my driver rating, but still.

Other reasons to use an alternative to Uber like Lyft is the fact the Lyft app lets you give a driver a tip. Too many times I have been in a situation where I had no cash to tip an Uber driver who helped me carry heavy luggage or items because the app lacks a tip feature.

I am not one for jumping on bandwagons, but I really do not like the kind of leadership and image Uber are portraying, not to mention the questionable business practices that were revealed a little while ago.

The power of choice is the strongest message we can send Uber that they need to grow up and be a real business. Vote by choosing an alternative if this bothers you like it bothers me.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts about learning object saliency from these datasets. Most human generated images have built-in biases toward framing things humans care about, and all of the captions will reflect the relative importance (to humans) of pictured objects.

Captioning images, for humans, is a subset of a much more general skill set. Humans can scan a broad visual scene for salient components, focus on those while ignoring non-salient objects, and then organize their thoughts about what has been seen in such a way as to produce an extremely low dimensional description of the scene (a descriptive sentence.)

Human's also have the advantage of immediate feedback to their generated descriptions from peers or parents.

I haven't seen much work that has attempted to tackle datasets that aren't pre-framed by humans, or ones that try to scale reinforcement learning. I'd love to hear your thoughts or get suggested reading if any pops to mind.
I recall that my first introduction to GWT was Google Wave... sadly, while it was groundbreaking in showing how you could write complex, testable code that ran both in the browser and on the server, Wave wasn't a great showcase for GWT's performance characteristics. Now, with Node.js and its relatively stable module system filling that isomorphic+maintainable gap, it's unclear what GWT brings to the table unless you have reasons to use Java (like a team with a lot of expertise in it, or a legacy codebase, for instance). I'm curious to hear if GWT's compiler can do significant performance optimizations on modern JIT JS engines, as compared to well-written Javascript that follows roughly the same module/class structure.
PlanGrid (YC W12) is looking for awesome JavaScript hackers
Adding a plug for git-annex. https://git-annex.branchable.com/

git annex is for more than just backups. In particular, it lets you store files on multiple machines and retrieve them at will. This lets you do backups to e.g. S3, but it also lets you e.g. store your mp3 collection on your NAS and then easily copy some files to your laptop before leaving on a trip. Any changes you make while you're offline can be sync'ed back up when you come back online.

You can prune old files in git-annex [1], and it also supports encryption. git-annex deduplicates identical files, but unlike Attic &co, it does not have special handling of incremental changes to files; if you change a file, you have to re-upload it to the remote server.

git-annex is actively developed, and I've found the developer to be really friendly and helpful.

[1] You can prune the old files, but because the metadata history -- basically, the filename to hash mapping -- is stored in git, you can't prune that. In practice you'd need to have a pretty big repository with a high rate of change for this to matter.

Edited for formatting.
There's a bunch of providers listed on https://www.exoticvps.com/ .
The decent response to "powerful tech executive considers doxxing female journalist who reports bad things about his company" is not to spend one paragraph thinking of every possible way he could be exonerated, then randomly slag online journalists with no-true-Scotsman arguments.
Node.js or Python/Django?
I've been using Node.js for quite a while and have become pretty invested. But I can't help but have a "grass is greener" feeling about python and Django. Python is just so much prettier than Javascript, but I feel like I'd be jumping off of the fast- moving node train! I am currently a senior CS student, so I'll also be looking for a job soon. Should I focus my time on python? or stay with node?
Try vpngate:http://www.vpngate.net , Hope you join vpngate network too :)
It was posted a few days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8609391
JavaScript for beginners, Haskell for advanced.
The boot code Pure64 is really cool, and your Rust code is a good demonstration of its simplicity. I should try this out sometime.
The rearview mirror one is actually a really cool experiment. I wonder if eventually you'd just get used to it (although you probably wouldn't get used to all of the neck and joint pain from trying to do things so awkwardly).
Apologies will go around, investors won't be held accountable, employees will be fired to feign action, company culture won't change, and they'll all end up rich(er), more influential, and praised by this very community at the end of it all. Such is life, sadly.

I've been a loyal Uber customer for some time, and have defended them in the past, but there's an undeniable pattern that's emerged indicating a company culture I'd rather not support any longer.
It almost feels like this was setup to be leaked. Instead of paying $1M to dig up dirt, now they can just pay for a few faux-pologetic PR messages and have even more journalists worried about covering them badly in the future.
A quick glance suggests this seems a little more flexible then doxygen or cweb in terms of what you can annotate, but it seems like it could have been built to expand on doxygen/javadoc syntax, whereas this looks like it reinvents the wheel when it comes to annotation. It seems like compatibility with doxygen + additional features might be a better choice, especially since, as a new js program, it may be slower then doxygen, which is mature and compiled from C++, when running on big/complex files.

That said it looks well-documented and mature.
It's interesting how people supposedly vote to control the government, but then they're often rallied to beg and plead the government they're controlling through voting to please not oppress them so much.

They believe that a new law with a "special advocate" sent to do stuff within the confines of the secret kangaroo-court system will somehow prevent the NSA from spying on (precious exceptionalist) Ah-mmuuhricans, even though the most sacred and supposedly inviolable law in the nation, strangely enough, fails to prevent police officers from confiscating their property.

Interesting indeed..
Can we all just agree that Uber, as a company, is a piece of shit? They obviously have no respect for their drivers, their customers, or the public at large. Their sense of competition is cutthroat and amoral.
If you think about it from a purely practical standpoint, it would make sense for all countries to block the any CDN that isn't on their soil. Local companies make more money hosting websites, less traffic on the pipes coming into the country, and better control over what is censored.
Nobody ?
19th Century Grain Merchants and Modern Transaction Frictions
I don't really care how "innocent" or "guilty" the VP is, just thinking out loud - playing devil's advocate if you will. :) That said, I still do think there is legitimate concern over the lack of consequence in general among journalists, although admittedly this was definitely the wrong article to bring this up on - I think I've started a witch hunt now :)
I'm pretty sure he didn't even RTFA.

And, related to what he wrote, yes, you can buy a more powerful Mikrotik router for less than one with the Cisco name on it. The software on 'em sucks, though, and they have some weirds things about them. Additionally, they used to flagrantly skirt around the GPL although I'm not sure if they still do.
If execution is so important, why do I see the same investors again and again in each deal? How much is cause and how much is effect?
Great sentiment. Thanks for writing this. Always check your assumptions at the door.
On the Shoulders of Giants: The Growing Impact of Older Articles
In my opinion someone in such a high up role in a high profile company like Uber who have had their fair share of bad publicity and controversies should know better. Having worked for the White House as a senior advisor, Emil Michael of all people should know the importance of being careful what you say in public, whether it be on or off the record.

While it is possible what he said was taken out of context slightly, the fact anything was said along these lines paints the picture of someone who should not be in business. What company does NOT have bad things said about them? We all live in a free country where journalists are entitled to their opinions just as much as everyone else including Mr. Michael. But the harsh reality is people in positions of influence or power whether it be a company or political party do not have such luxury, such is the case for Emil.

Sure Emil's views might not reflect Uber as a company, but because of his position, it comes back on the company. This is the kind of stuff that competitors of Uber can only dream of. Emil has made Uber look bad by association, in the eyes of the public, Uber might as well have released a press statement themselves with the same words. I would not be surprised if action is taken against him for this, Uber cannot really afford any more controversy.
> What I never understood with my self build SSH proxy VPN: China seems to be able to sniff on it.

There's two possibilities that I can see; you were letting your DNS requests leak and they were being poisoned, or they were doing a direct MITM hijack of your SSH session. Neither is particularly comforting, but it's fairly easy to work out which if either is going on.
This is great news.

People bashing other companies, keep in mind some of them employ people that work near full-time on FreeBSD.

But, some deserve the bashing.
Actually bananas are a huge deal since they provide the basic nutrition for large populations in many parts of the world. Also Cavendish is the dominant set of varieties world over and there are not many real substitutes for it, yet.
The man who can hear Wi-Fi wherever he walks
Thanks, really well put - I agree. :)

Also, just wanted to add, I'm not concerned about journalistic opinions - that is protected by free speech. The only area where I consider such things harmful is where opinions effect things they should not, and objectivity is not used in the right places. What you are "free" to say, and what you should say in terms of being a good reporter are, of course, two different things. An example I've seen used a lot recently was where some reporter gave a pretty good game a low score because he thought it did not portray females strongly enough. I don't read game reviews to hear about political soap-boxing (even though I am pro-equality).

In the same way, I like to read about companies on the basis of their actions, or in the case of their official policies, their words - I'm sure many of us have made some comment that we look back on like "what was I thinking?" -- this sort of "gossip" reporting does not do it for me in that respect. Again, I stress that even in light of this, the VP does not seem like a good person in my book, but I won't let that effect my view of the rest of the company (Uber is doing a pretty good job of hurting its own image regardless ;) )
These are intentionally useless ;).
I'm really curious to know if women are really going to use this. From the video, it looks really big and I'm guessing it's not light in weight either.
Hi Pamela,
Thanks for the detailed response! It made me realize that Khan Academy does work a little differently than a book. You have a lot more readers "snacking" or looking for a reference. So it makes sense to group the Big-O discussion together, cover more algorithms, etc. I <3 KA, keep up the good work!
> A ping suggests a 50% packet loss.

This likely caused by the limited peering arrangements of your host. I rent ~10 virtual private servers outside China, and ping times vary between 90ms ('best' provider) to 500ms ('worst' provider). Packet loss varies over time, but has never been an issue with > half of the providers.

> What I never understood with my self build SSH proxy VPN: China seems to be able to sniff on it.

Were you using an HTTP proxy (e.g. forwarding a local port to squid running on your VPS) or a SOCKS proxy (just using the SSH command to act as a socks proxy)? If the latter, then your DNS queries would still be resolved locally (probably by your ISP's DNS server and, even if using an external DNS server, subject to MITM).
Phantom Terrains
Yes. That works fine between official releases and I've been using it to upgrade in the last 3 years.

However, pg_updrade does not support upgrading between beta releases, which is one of the reasons why I stick to released versions.
And I'd bet the oil companies lobbied for 'deep' aquifers to be deemed usable for fracking.
Very interesting article with some cool approaches. I'd be really interested to know how often the model needs to be trained? Seems like a lot of purchases are holiday/seasonally relevant and you'd hate to be suggesting valentine's day gifts on Feb 20th because everybody was buying them 2 weeks ago. Also be great to see any insights on how many features you need to get a good guess on a users tastes and preferences? Are 20 numbers enough to represent most of the dimensionality of Etsy products or 100 or 1000?
Which leads to the more interesting question: what is the angle to be played from leaking this?
The first one, about the slacking guy, absolutely mesmerized me. The writing was so fluent and descriptive. It has a good literary value.