skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My inner paranoid finds this interesting from the perspective of Google entering yet another domain where they have high accuracy data on the present/future whereabouts and private concerns of a large number of people.. add it to the hundred other properties they maintain that appear to have no direct business value other than capturing masses of sensitive data that was previously nicely decentralized and private.

Can't book a flight (ITA), order a taxi (this), book a hotel or chat with a friend (Gmail), or pay for dinner (Wallet) without generating an activity log with a single company.

Even if (and perhaps even probably) Google weren't doing this intentionally, they've already demonstrated through failing to encrypt their inter-DC connections how they're becoming a massive single point of failure (remember Snowden showed us the NSA were tapping Google's internal network already). Whether the end result is an intelligence service tap, or some legislative measure affecting the company done in the open, I'll simply never be comfortable with one company concentrating so much personal data affecting so many people.
Maybe it's time to make a truly F/OSS React clone?

For those who may want other options to React after reading this, mithril is small & has JS DOM:

https://lhorie.github.io/mithril/getting-started.html

How it's rendered:

http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/mithril.render.html

Differences with React:

http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/comparison.html#react
I think we should differentiate between a self-driving car (with a full set of controls) and a driverless car. The former is 100x more likely to happen than the latter. You might see driverless buses that go on predefined routes.
The 'Daemon' dream falls down in the fact of fraud and/or entropy. Ask PayPal about their 100% automated fraud detection algorithm (did not work) or Google about driving on umapped roads or through snow.

Will humans on the "receiving" side of an API remain unaugmented, i.e. operating at human speeds with a slow touchscreen interface? Or will they develop their own automation, so that millisecond-speed algorithms broker between the "manager" and "worker"?

How much ad and click revenue today is actually human? Bookstores did not sit idly by when Amazon decided to take on the entire industry, how is Amazon's publishing imprint doing? Humans do eventually wake up and compete with algorithms.
As someone that has been waiting for GFiber because of the lack of Title II classification, I say bring on the Title II. They already abuse their classifications when possible anyways.
I don't think the quote was saying that Uber is providing said fire hose of data, but rather that Google Maps gives Google a fire hose of traffic data which in turn Uber utilizes to create efficient routing.
The article states 2-5 years for Google's driverless cars
Not that I don't love OSM - I use it myself for some side projects - but is it really better?

Here in NYC I've found several streets mislabeled as one-way in the wrong direction, and not too long ago at that. If these major errors can be found by some guy just fooling around, in one of the biggest cities in the world, how useful is OSM for navigation?
> Tabs, however, are constantly groomed and sifted through and pruned.

Exactly this (apologies for the 2-day delay!). This is exactly why I keep so many tabs open, because I can filter them and use them as a living browsing session. It also provides me with some amusement when I look through tabs opened weeks (sometimes months?) prior, because it gives me a snapshot into what I was thinking of/looking for during that window of history.

I'm really glad to find others who share my usage patterns. I don't feel so weird. :D

Aside: Just a week or two ago, I archived a bunch of tabs from a generic browsing session and I think the total came close to 980. Eeeek!
Blog: roll my own or just use Wordpress?
I'm not a serious blogger but like to create posts about once a month. I hate vanilla wordpress, but its feature set and ui is much better than anything I could write on my own. I wrote a basic blog app using django, but I hate having to support it. Have others struggled with this choice, what did you decide?
Typically, but not always.
So aegism is a thing I guess but not if you are good. One of my best guys is north of 55 and man oh man the code he can do and the reviews he can do put a 30 year old on the top of their game to shame.

So if you are good then I think aegism is not such a big deal. But, yeah, it's a concern. If my company folds I'm not sure how easy it would be for me to get a job (I'm 52 and definitely slower than I used to be).
An agile approach to self-improvement
> Bilingualism, in other words, seems to have a protective effect on cognitive decline

Do I really need to say it?... "Those whose cognition will decline slower seem to be more likely to become bilingual".
Am I the only one thinking a targeted convergence with driverless cars down the road (no pun intended)? Once you remove the largest cost factor (the human), does pricing reduce to $.56/mi (or whatever the Standard Mileage Rate, or derivative thereof, is at the time).

Added with Express to overload deliveries to maximize utility (maybe offer riders a discount if they can make an express stop along the way...)
Why You Should Learn Drupal
There are people who do see this happen. I vaguely remember bill gates saying things about automation encroaching on low-skill jobs, and that many white-collar jobs would not be far behind. [0]

I don't think his solution is viable however, since it would only delay the inevitable. Even if you make humans dirt cheap, the power of computers and all the benefits of automation will still be cheaper, only later.

He extrapolates that our current take on our economy will soon be very outdated and that it needs to be rethought. Perhaps our star-treck economy will not be the result of space-travel, but automation. Imo this is the best possible outcome I can imagine.

[0]: http://bgr.com/2014/03/14/bill-gates-interview-robots/
Do not pay for stock photos or graphics
Automation/systemisation is how productivity & profitability grows. Everyone should be clear on this - and be ready to retrain, ideally before time!
Please watch this: https://vimeo.com/22053820
Does anyone have any info about what kind of allergic reaction could have caused this?

I'm fearful of hospital procedures for reasons like these. How'd the doctors let it slip by? But it's a dumb fear and I'm trying to break myself of it.
1) Setup VM with OSX,
2) Sign-in iTunes account created with a gift card,
3) Download/purchase app in iTunes (OSX),
4) Rate app in iTunes (OSX).

Step 3 might require a physical device, but 1, 2, and 4 do not.
I've been thinking about what I visualize as "plant" intelligence, in response to Elon Musk's statements about killer AI. It seems like Andrew Ng is saying the same thing.

The metaphor is that you could have "sedentary" superintelligences that solve a relatively narrow problem. They take in huge amounts of data, and spit out ingenious answers to well-defined problems. Things like traffic-routing, energy allocation, or photo/video recognition, etc. They are tools for humans.

By what mechanism do these superintelligences involve into organisms motivated to extinguish humans? Reproduction, which leads to independent evolution. That process is inherently unpredictable.

But right now we're firmly in the stage of humans creating AI. Our AI is nowhere near capable enough to create more AI. And I would argue that there is no possibility of this happening by "accident"; you would have to specifically engineer AI to able to create more AI.

I agree with Ng in that it's more of a distraction now than anything else. The jobs issue is a lot more pertinent.

It reminds me of this book I got at Google 8 or 9 years ago. This guy asked a robotic professors how they would avoid being killed by a robot. And the professor said: "Climb up one step" (on a staircase).
This is effectively the industrial revolution of knowledge workers & the mobile workforce.

We found things for everyone to do, but if history may be a guide, we could be in for 30-80 years of adjustment.
> There is probably no harm replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat, but that's not what happened based on decades of AHA and govt. recommendations.

One of the leading hypotheses is that omega-6 fat - which is a subcategory of polyunsaturated - is very very bad for you. So there is absolutely potential for harm in replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat.
Well, we weren't using Erlang much (and had written very little, if any). And while it's unclear if it's related to Erlang or not, over time our Erlang-based systems have been ripped out of our stack because of their failure to meet our production needs. In particular: Erlang-based systems are fine when they're fine, but undebuggable when they're not. While JavaScript might not be known for its observability, we have been able to advance the state of the art there considerably[1]; at this point there is no question that node.js is much more observable and debuggable in production than Erlang.

[1] https://www.joyent.com/developers/node/debug
Wouldn't it be more interesting if it showed some sort of information about the source code? For example the edits over time similar to this project: http://www.bewitched.com/historyflow.html
Bing map data would work just as well. Google might have more coverage out in the sticks but for where Uber operates the coverage density and accuracy difference would be somewhere between negligible to non-existent.
Yes, because clearly one-or-two possibly-colluding ISPs in your particular area are driven existentially towards increasing the value for you, the customer. Get real.

Besides, there's very little innovation in the actual IP layer anymore -- though, perhaps you could point to some? It's basically (by sheer domination) not displacable at this point. Hence QUIC and such things which could probably be done (even) better at a lower layer, but which for all practical purposes are dead in the water if they don't function above IP. (In the case of QUIC at the IP/UDP layer.)
You're right, that doesn't make any sense. The buoyant force is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced. Doubling the volume of your balloons doubles the buoyant force and therefore doubles the weight you can carry. The relationship is linear, not exponential.
It's not very hard to build a keylogger using basic pic chips and install them into a keyboard. The same could be done against a dumb terminal. For bonus points, put a bluetooth module / picoduino inside so that you can read out people's keystrokes without touching it again.
Robohub Digest: What happened in robotics in January 2015
Why aren't people thinking about sending various robots/devices that could terraform planets before humans going in to live there? Is this something that is impossible to do/imagine? what am I missing?
Show HN: AI Planning for Starcraft
It's an interesting point to think about.

But my first thought was what would happen if you accidentally let a troll into your group. ie, someone who enjoys yelling "change" just to watch everyone else jump.

Heck, that person might be genuinely unhappy unless everyone is changing! Add in someone else who hates all change, and you have an unresolvable contradiction.
I wouldn't invest. That growth curve doesn't seem reasonable.

VC's: I don't really see there being an interest in this. What's the viral coefficient?
Modern conventional wisdom would tell them to "focus".
Will I have to have a Google+ account to ride?
I was thinking about this. They don't necessarily have to face the same problems as Uber because they don't have to compete with taxi companies. Uber's model completely relies on direct competition with legacy taxi companies. Google could simply offer their self driving cars to said taxi companies and they'll be able to cut their personnel by 95% over night. You can cut the costs of operating a taxi service while still operating within the confines of the current system.

Not sure the taxi companies would get in bed with Google, or cut rates accordingly, I'm just suggesting that driverless cars have certain advantages.

That said, theres a whole other can of worms of trying to pass regulation allowing pilotless cars, which I'd guess will be just as difficult as duking it out with TLC's around the country.
so when any other company does something like this, we cry anti-trust. But when Google does it, it's good business?

I'm not sure where all of this Google love comes from on HN (besides all of the engineers that work there). Google is just as evil as any large corporation.

They may surgar-coat everything with a "do no evil" mantra, but it's just good PR. When you peel back these layers, it's business as usual.
Really decentralized cryptographically secured rewards for advancing research: Gridcoin (intro at http://uscore.net)
AFAIK, sulphuric acid is present in the Venusian atmosphere in large enough quantities to cause obscuring clouds. Though, I imagine that equipment to harvest the hydrogen from those clouds would end up being quite expensive. (Given my limited chemistry knowledge, I'd guess that large amounts of silicon would be involved in their manufacture.) There are also significant amounts of hydrogen sulfide. (Which could be quite a complication for human settlers as well.)

EDIT: FTFA -- "Moreover, while both planets boast ample amounts of volatile life-sustaining materials like hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen, only Venus’s dense atmosphere would be helpful in shielding human colonists from the harsh assault of solar radiation."
Considering Google have invested a fair bit of cash into Uber which might be a tax write-off for Google, I would probably say we are going to see Google try and buy Uber out instead. Cutting off their maps access would probably open up a can of worms for Google as Uber would undoubtedly take legal action (and they have the funds to really go for it), there could be a little bit of conflict of interest happening here as Google have access to inner workings of Uber's business model and the business itself.

But having said that, there is probably nothing stopping Google from creating a driverless car Uber rival, it would fall outside of the realm of being a true direct competitor as there are no drivers. But are driverless cars at a point where they can be rolled out on a larger scale? Seems there is a lot of regulation and process to abide by before that starts to happen, maybe a controlled rollout?

I am surprised Google haven't tried launching their own airline yet, it would probably be undeniably easier than a ridesharing network of driverless cars.
There is actually prior art; React is not the first public use of an immutable virtual DOM; a basically identical approach was presented at Clojure Conj November 2012 (React launched publicly in May 2013 iirc, though React was used on instagram.com in September 2012 [0]):

https://github.com/drcode/webfui
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeI5-D7SQe8

If I found myself in a position where Facebook took away my access to React.js and to the patented ideas, does this help me at all? E.g. could I use this as a base and implement the immutable virtual dom myself, or looking into alternatives like mithril?

[0] https://twitter.com/floydophone/status/427160179616927744

(Some edits)
Are you implying that GPS is used directly to track where each node is at? Or just that the ubiquity of GPS enabled devices makes it too easy for individuals to inadvertently share too much of their location?

These are very very different points, and the first one is not really technically possible since GPS is just an ultra precise timestamp broadcast, there is no two way data.
Uber have struck me before as a bigger potential headache for Google than even Facebook were/are, and I suspect this is all an effort to acquire them and drive the price down.

There is something about the automated dispatch at giant scale business which overlaps with the search as interface idea. "Get me to [wherever]" is a natural extension of what you might do after searching. Furthermore, the act of finding a driver is itself a search. Feed the driver information back into search and it gets entertaining, with queries like "What are the restaurants right now with 80% rating, tables available and will cost me less than $20 to get to?" That's a query you can only answer with the driver and price data. As such Uber have the hard bit and can grow the rest, Google face a move into a physical world full of people, which is pretty much their Achilles heel.
The landline option I had previously was serviced by my cable company. If my internet was out, so was my landline, despite it not being VOIP. At my previous residence, it was serviced by the local phone company, and ran through a multiplexing box which plugged into my house power. Both that option and my cable modem have battery backups which continue to function in a power outage, but once that's gone, no more service.

That leaves only VOIP provider outages as a concern, and I've yet to experience one of those in a few years.
Well you're in luck on that last point, because nobody has ever paid for their meal with Google Wallet.
You can actually look up the exact number for the current Falcon (non-heavy). It's ~1,900 kg (I think), for the minimum C3 of 8.5 km^2/s^2.

https://books.google.com/books?id=vpilMLP7OHQC&pg=PA112

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/001/f9guide.pdf

(page 22)
Let Us Now Praise Corporate Persons
I'd stick with Wordpress. Find a template you like, it'll be worth the $40-60 to not have to constantly support a custom app for something like blogging.
Google maps has already started showing Uber price estimates when you enter a route
I agree. I think that there are two things that are missed out from the this article.

1. Programmers are lazy and will waste cycles like crazy around IO if given a chance. Core library async get's them thinking in red mode but it also get's them actually thinking in ways that allow the overall app to usefully get on with other things. Go sounds like it might be a nice exception to this but I'm not familiar enough to comment.

2. He kinda skips over the fact that threads are really really hard to work with and test (I immediately think about wasting time with race conditions that are just about impossible to reproduce or fix). Node.JS style continuation hell has the advantage of being a model that can actually be understood and made to work reliably in a way that threading, in theory can, but in practice cannot.
Avoid the headache of upgrading software when you really want to focus on writing. There are more blogging platforms besides wordpress. https://ghost.org/ or http://squarespace.com/home/overview/ come to mind.
> Is there some forum for advanced tab browsing users?

Not that I'm aware of, but there might be a support group. ;)

Joking aside, it's curious how much flak you can take from suggesting that you make extensive use of a feature that's built into the browser... everyone I know thinks I'm a bit odd when they see my Firefox sessions.

> For me windows are tasks/areas of research. A task can last minutes, hours, days or even weeks.

I really like this perspective, because it's deeply reflective of my usage patterns. For example, when I was learning Golang, I had a session opened exclusively for that, with all the respective documentation, some blogs, tutorials, and various odds and ends. Over time it evolved, certainly, but those tabs remained open for the duration that I needed them. It doesn't matter if it's a day, two days, or two months.

I have one Firefox profile configured to use Session Manager with various saved sessions based on whatever I'm working on. So, whenever I need a major context switch, I save the current session, then switch to the one I need. It allows me to pick up where I left off--even if there's 300+ tabs in that particular list. Though, I'm pretty bad about clearing some of those tabs out--oftentimes it's because I want to revisit whatever I was researching, even if it takes several months!

It sounds like you and I do about the same thing in that regard! Although, I've yet to learn the bookmarking technique. ;) Presently, for my generic browsing, I just dump everything into a dated folder. Everything else of interest that I don't want to inadvertently lose gets shunted into my unsorted bookmarks without a date under the pretense that I'll eventually categorize it (which I usually do). I think I'll have to try the categorization for tasks that are complete rather than simply bookmarking tabs individually and massacring the rest.
Have you ever lived outside Silicon Valley and looked for electronic parts? If you're in a small town in most places in the US, RadioShack is quite possibly the ONLY place you will be able to find a resistor, potentiometer, or even a fuse or soldering equipment half the time. The other places you may have luck are WalMart or Sears.

In a few small towns I've spent a lot of time in, there's joint Ace Hardware-Radio shack stores which are pretty useful.

It ain't no Fry's (and even Fry's is pretty crappy compared to dedicated component stores), but it's better than nothing.
> those cases where you really are deservedly confident (e.g. vaccines)

Why are you so confident in vaccines?
There are papers saying your right to be confident

http://1796kotok.com/pdfs/MMR_withdrawal.pdf

... and rebuttals to those papers.

https://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/japvaxaut...

Should we, as non-scientists automatically discount the rebuttals?
Nobody has the Venus lander thing figured out. Soviet landers could only last a short time before being roasted/crushed/corroded.

In comparison to the Venusian surface, the religious notion of hell would be a tropical beach.
We're one step closer to Johnny Cab, though I suspect it will work a little better than the version in Total Recall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGi6j2VrL0o