skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What the author is alluding to is the phenomena of landlords forcing a resident to leave outright, or raising rent beyond the level that existing tenants can pay, resulting in the existing tenant being forced to leave. This is usually done to make more money.

However, I agree with what you're saying: what did people think would happen?! In renting a place, the landlord does not have to keep the rent the same. This is a risk that comes with renting.

> Don’t assume that because you have more money that you have to right to take someone else’s home away. Don’t treat an existing community like your personal playground.

I just... what? No one here is playing dirty, no one is targeting anyone else. The rules of the economic system that we all live in say that these things are possible events, and maybe ones we should all be prepared for.

Also, you can't destroy a community. Communities exist when people exist. Communities can change, like when the people that exist in a community change. But humans will still be there, doing their human thing. And I think that's what this is really about; change that the author doesn't like.
> I'm sure they're basing a lot of that on information they got from the NSA

Cite the exact sources the House Intelligence Committee's report was based on. If it's coming directly from the NSA what makes you think it's trustworthy? They've lied under oath.

Your conclusions are debatable.

> I'm curious if you bothered reading the three articles you cited, because the Washington Post article

Curious about your reading ability as well. The article is from the Washington Times, not the Washington Post. The very first paragraph states:

The Obama administration’s credibility on intelligence suffered another blow Wednesday as the chief of the National Security Agency admitted that officials put out numbers that vastly overstated the counterterrorism successes of the government’s warrantless bulk collection of all Americans’ phone records.

They seem to be talking about the exact same numbers you're citing as unassailable truth. Hopefully that satisfies your curiosity.

> I'm guessing you've never sat in on a classified congressional intelligence committee briefing, and wouldn't have the information to back up your statement.

Sorry this doesn't make sense. Not sure how to respond.
The post is discussing who VCs choose to fund.
> You're missing the forest.
How is WiFi insecure?
edge.org "2015 : WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK?"

http://edge.org/responses/what-do-you-think-about-machines-t...
I don't really think that you're right that high-rep users can't see things from a newbie's point of view. Most high-rep users got there by being good at seeing things from a newbie's point of view, and thus being able to explain things well to newbies.

The answers that get the most upvotes, and give you the most reputation, are the basic problems that everyone has, since then everyone finds that question, and upvotes the answer that solves the problem for them.

I'll note that as a high-rep user (top 0.1% overall), I more often see the moderate-rep users as the ones closing a lot of questions. The high-rep users are busy getting more reputation by actually answering questions, it's the moderate rep users that have just enough to be able to vote to close that wind up spending all of their time policing the site.

The biggest problem that I have with SO is the review queue, which queues up questions that have close votes or flags, in order to get a quicker resolution, and rewards people with badges for spending a lot of time reviewing questions that they don't really know much about. I've seen so many slightly vague questions closed because of that, when if you had actually just spent a few minutes getting the user to clarify via comments, you could have figured out what their actual problem was and answered it. But because there's a review queue, and badges for reviewing lots of questions, answers, edits, etc, some people just spend all their time in there rather than actually trying to answer or clarify.

Anyhow, I very frequently hear vague complaints about SO, but it's much more informative to look at particular examples. Do you have examples of questions that have been closed that you don't think should have been? As a high-rep user, I can vote for them to be re-opened, and as an experienced user I can help reword them and make them more clear so that they will be more likely to be reopened and less likely to be closed.

By the way, one thing that can be challenging is figuring out, from a question that doesn't provide enough information, what the user is asking. This is hard for anyone to figure out, newbie or experienced user. The best way to avoid this is to ask questions clearly. State the exact problem you're trying to solve, show a small code example that demonstrates the problem, state what you've tried in order to solve it. And state a question that can be solved objectively; there's no way to provide a good, unambiguously correct answer to an opinion question, and the whole reason for StackOverflow to exist is to provide good, unambiguously correct answers, not to prompt endless discussion threads in which everyone discusses their favorite X.

If you follow these guidelines, you should generally be able to get a good answer on SO, and not have your question closed (unless as a duplicate, which is another way of solving your problem by redirecting you to existing answers).
I'm quite annoyed that my copy of that got thrown away.

And it really was as electrifying, you might say, as portrayed in this Fast Company article.
It's difficult to do that when the article is full of similar statements that separate the 'tech elite' as a different class of people who are destroying all kinds of culture that SF might have had.

I agree that the influx of wealth into SF is causing lots of housing problems and social upheavals, but the same wealth has also improved the lives of lots of people not of this 'tech elite'.

By purposefully alienating the people you blame for everything wrong with the modern state of SF you aren't exactly creating an atmosphere for dialogue.
This never happens in san francisco, the rents go up very little every year.. less than inflation, so in real terms your rent gets cheaper every year.
This is actually a quite compelling argument though I am not sure I am completely sold on it. For what it is worth I am not scared of AI because I think it is our goal as humanity to make it and merge with it.

>The idea that an exponentially self-improving being will arise seems unlikely when nature has been trying to do that for eons.

Unfortunately I think this falls prey to the fallacy of precedent and it eliminates the possibility that humans could design something that would do something that nature has not been able to.

I also disagree with your premise because it is not in the long term interest of bacteria to deplete it's environment entirely - hence logistic growth of bacterial cultures - so coming to a symbiotic relationship would theoretically maximize the group based on biological limitations.

In my opinion the transition from humans to transhumans needs an engineered step where AGI(s) and humans are reliant on each other symbiotically rather than competitively.
Heh, yes indeed. I was privileged enough to own a Voodoo Rush card - their first all in one card with 2D and 3D on board... I was utterly amazed when I first played a 3D game on it.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
> The real threat posed by AI is one that all of us face everyday: bad software design. Is it likely that an unintended consequence will cause an AI to launch nuclear missiles, release toxic chemicals or shut down the global financial markets? Yes, pretty likely.

AI is not the kind of thing that can be designed. They tried that route, way back in the sixties, and just failed miserably. Realistically, AI will come from some combination of genetic algorithms, training neural networks, and so on.

Now, yes, it could fail, but not in the same way software as we know it fails. No, AI failure would be more similar to human failure. That is still worrying, but no more than hiring the wrong people would be, for example, and you would have better ways to evaluate them.
yeah it was definitely not in the 386/486 era. Another author who does not check what he's writing about... :/
Don't take this the wrong way, but this book is precisely the kind of thing I was talking about.

That paperclip idea I talked about is also something that Bostrom thought up [1]. I didn't make it up.

If you have any argument in mind (from that book) that you find convincing, please go ahead and state it outright. I'm truly curious.

Edit: In response to your edit(?), I do agree that the most worrisome problem is some bad actor gaining control of this technology. But that is different from saying it is dangerous in itself. Most anything can be abused for ill, and the more powerful the more dangerous. I completely agree on that.

[1]: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer
> My point in my previous comment was that most of the people watching videos on bomb-making are probably interested in building bombs.

My point is that your opinion is unconstitutional. You're certainly free to express it. Thanks to the constitution.
The required resources to destroy humanity are rather small and obtainable for a sufficiently smart tiny box.

For example, a sufficiently smart tiny box can figure out a DNA sequence for a horrible biological weapon. There are a number of commercial companies that do 'mail-order' synthesis of DNA, and with an amount of money that's easily obtainable by selling digital services (say, zero-day vulnerabilities can be easily sold anonymously) they can make and distribute it before anybody understands what it is. And that's just a single possible option - an AI smarter than me can figure out more and better options than I can.

The only barrier to exterminating humans is (a) having sufficient intelligence and (b) having the interest to do it. Capability is not really an issue.
3dfx. Now there is a name I haven't heard in a long long time.
Go is a language and Rails is a framework though it's not even an apt comparison. Ruby and Go is a better comparison though still not the best.
Ask HN: What's the best self-publishing platform for a technical ebook?
Looking to publish an ebook and evaluating my options now. Any ideas on a good platform to use? I prefer writing in markdown.
"remastered" -> a lot of the assets were not really remastered. I know that is what they are calling it but they are overselling the actual changes.
People probably just didn't notice that you're being sarcastic.
Distance Constraints with PostgreSQL and PostGIS
Ah, if your problem is about opinion questions like that, I recommend you not try to get StackOverflow to support that. StackOverflow is specifically geared towards objectively answerable questions; solving an actual problem that can be solved by code. "What's the best framework" or "why is framework X better than Y" will never fit well into its model.

I recommend starting another site, tailored for that kind of question, if that's something you're interested in. I imagine it would look pretty different than SO; instead of simply sorting by votes, you'd want to group answers by "reasons to prefer X" and "reasons to prefer Y", each of which could be voted on, and with optional discussion threads to clarify each one of them, or something of the sort.
What would stop a superintelligent machine with mastery of genetic modification from using the same biological systems for replication and repair?
before AI alone, there would be "augmentation" of people by better and new organs, synthetic/biological/hybrid. The people with augmented bodies and especially intelligence, probably strongly interconnected, may happen to have completely different world view, different priorities and may decide that paying attention to priorities and needs of the non-augmented populace is just a waste of resources/etc...
> We haven't thus far. And we've had the capability for a while. Care to present some evidence or a rational argument that we will? Signs point to the contrary.

I'm going to assume your argument is not merely, "Well, we haven't yet destroyed ourselves, so therefore, we aren't capable of doing that"...because then my response will just be, "Well, we haven't yet developed AI, so therefore, we aren't capable of doing that"...and so your counter-argument is based on a different interpretation of history than mine: I think the decades of Cold War and the near-misses we had with all-out nuclear war are examples of situations in which we have the potential to quickly wipe ourselves out without the help of AI. Others would point out the trend of mass surveillance -- again, implemented and controlled by humans and human institutions -- of a harbinger of doom.

Keep in mind that I'm not saying that technology has reached its peak. I am very open to the idea that we could reach a point of semi-autonomous systems, and yet still have human institutions as faulty as they are now, and the combination of both will result in a threat greater than what we've faced so far.
A Deep Dive into React Native
It is frustrating to see how many Go vs Node posts are happening here. I have been implementing a bluetooth LE module in Go, and due to lack of some robust libraries, had to go back to Node. This is primarily a question of maturity, but I also realised that my use-case didn't really need the thing which Go is most useful for - namely really really good concurrency primitives.
I am quite sceptical about Node's future because of that forking fiasco, but at this point in time, both Node and Go provide enough distinct functionality that both will be used for a long time.
In my understanding logistic growth is a byproduct of resource depletion, not of any self-moderation.
There's also the aspect that AI can reduce the effort required to get a computer to do something.

Today, if you want use a computer to do something outside the box you have to invest some level of time and other resources. With AI, it's conceivable that someone could issue a quick command and the computer would quickly find a way to fulfill that command, good or bad.

One can envisage an "AI arms race", whereby white hat AIs will be responsible for trying to stay ahead of black hat AIs, and the definition of black and white will depend on what side you are on.
A self-modifying, self-improving system (the only realistic way how we'll get to a powerful AI) will effectively design, implement and test the final version by itself.

It will respect "the constraints that any sane designer would encode in the software" if and only if it wanted be friendly and respect those constraints in the first place, otherwise you should expect for it to figure out how to work around them to achieve whatever goal function was implemented.

Furthermore, you state "it will perform exactly according to spec" - and that is the whole problem. All the specs which we currently can formally specify are bad. For specs in a form "AI, please optimize an ever-smarter AI that will maximize the goal X", choosing X that isn't catastrophically bad is a very hard unsolved problem. If we had a solution on how to define such a spec, then it would be an entirely different discussion, but currently noone can do that.
The ability of the public to challenge the government in court and win on an issue like this is a large part of why America is so successful - the citizens are what removes government rot and keeps the system running well.
"A less rhetorically gifted Oxfam staffer might have written instead that the world’s richest 80 people own around 0.7 percent of global wealth. That’s a lot, but it hardly seems staggering."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/upshot/why-we-cant-blame-a...
as mkehrt says.

>"Wonder how closely footfall at high-street traders equates to their revenue - pretty close I'd imagine?"

To put it another way: I was thinking that the number of people who go in to shops in the high-street might correlate well with the revenue for those same shops.
How about a Rust SDK for AWS?
I'm baffled by the intended authentication path not using the entire 4 bytes of the CRC after bothering with such a big random number.
There's a difference between privacy and anonymity. Privacy keeps people from seeing the stuff that you don't want others to see. It has little to do with freedom of speech. Anonymity is putting stuff out in the public without them knowing who said it. Yes, it's freedom of speech, but it's also freedom from accountability.

In a fully functioning democracy, you should be free to say whatever you want openly without being threatened. If you can't make an argument openly, I would immediately question why: is it because society is unjust, or because you can't stand behind the argument?
Thanks, this is incredibly helpful. I will pass it along to the team in the next 45 seconds.
Of course, but is also different than what was alleged.
A tutorial on how to get into an admin account on ANY Windows 7 computer
Researchers may have cure for peanut allergies
I think humans can currently write our own DNA using the technology we have. The capability to optimize without limitation is something we haven't figured out yet. I think the same challenge exists for AI.
Replace CoffeeScript with ES6
What happened to this post? It went from the top 10 on the front page, down to the 102nd place within a half hour.
Nothing, but that expenditure of effort on replication and repair may place some limits on the effort expended on intelligence. If intelligence was all we needed to expend effort on as humans my belief is that we would look very different. I think in order to be a self-sustaining entity AI will have to expend effort on banal tasks not related to intelligence.
How to Create an Integration for Nimble CRM
My friends at Google constantly bash my use of Azure, Visual Studio and .NET/C# for my backend work - which they believe are inferior products. If you've actually used these products you would know that there is nothing inferior about them. Also, Vine/Facebook/Instagram/etc. all have modern apps on Windows Phone and yet a company the size of Google couldn't even bother to update their search app on that platform? Really?

Sorry but its evident to me as an outsider that Google has a chip on their shoulder when it comes to Microsoft, whether it be intentional weaved into their culture or not.
Here's why census data is relevant: If you receive an extended survey from the U.S. census, you are legally required to fill it out with all sorts of personal data. If you don't return it, a census rep will hound you until you do.

The "Privacy Policy" for this data is on the U.S. Census website here:

http://www.census.gov/about/policies/privacy/data_protection...

Note the statement that "the statistics we release do not identify individuals or businesses".

During the last census, it became pretty obvious that this would be an effective way for the U.S. Government to compel information from people who were suspected of something. Section 215 of the Patriot Act, after all, gives the government carte blanche to obtain any "tangible" thing.

IMHO... the interesting questions to ask when this legal opinion is released are:

1. Was there ever any accuracy to the U.S. Census "Privacy Policy"? Were the privacy policies of the U.S. Census misrepresented to the public, and in particular to those who were required to complete an extended survey?

2. Does the legal opinion address the "third-party doctrine" when the information provided is provided under legal compulsion, and in particular with potential (if commonly unused) penalties for non-cooperation?

A very interesting test case would be for someone to sue the government, in light of the upcoming 2020 census, to test the constitutionality of the criminal liability for not completing the extended survey in light of the government using the information provided for potential law enforcement purposes. It should be easier than usual to establish standing since anyone can be forced to complete one of these extended surveys.
Okay, I wasn't aware previously. Thank you for correcting my ignorance.
> if and only if it wanted be friendly and respect those constraints in the first place

No, not if it "wanted" to - if it was written that way.

> otherwise you should expect for it to figure out how to work around them to achieve whatever goal function was implemented

Yes, if the goal function did not include preserving certain (behavioral) invariants in its own programming, then yes.

But, it would.

> Making a spec "AI, do X" that isn't catastrophically bad is a very hard unsolved problem.

No it's not. That's just something you throw out there. I just gave an example of exactly how to do it. Write a simple test to check whether a certain outcome is endorsed or rejected by the A.I.

If you are the designer, you will not stop there either. You will want to check that the reason it is rejected is because the machine is working in exactly the way you predicted.

Do this for a couple hundred scenarios, and make sure that the clock ticks right, and I see no reason to introduce any talk of "hard unsolved problems".
Not that unusual these days. CPython supports a similar intermediate binary (.pyo) and .NET does the same too, albeit the bytecode is shipped inside a PE.
> Experience can end up equating to an inability to try new things, so inexperience can be desirable in innovative pursuits.

You're making this comment on a post exploring the age of famous inventors when they were awarded patents. Instead of responding with stereotypes it'd probably be a stronger case to point out inventors of similar caliber who achieved their most innovative pursuits in their early 20s rather than later in life.
Interestingly enough I have yet to read a really well thought through scenario where an AGI is devastatingly harmful and I have read pretty much everything there is to read on the subject from Bostrom, Yudkowski, MIRI etc...

It's all very theoretical. Interestingly enough my thesis is on this area and I have had the hardest time coming up with a logical A>B>C...n process which does so.
Maybe branch your GitHub so you retain the original and a "clean up with what I know now" branch.

They still like you or they would have just sent you a "Dear John" letter.
I'm going on 34. Maybe I'm not in the older bracket yet, I think I am. But I'm learning more complex things now than I was ten years ago and retaining more of it too. At what age is that supposed to go away for me when I devote almost all of my free time to learning new things?
Oh how I wish I agreed with that. I recognize the huge value of a healthy justice system, but at the same time (a) there's so much we still cannot get through this type of legal process (National Security Letters, anyone), and (b) there's so much systemic rot that cannot be addressed this way (e.g., campaign financing) or in any other way that seems tractable to me.
Arizona Cardiologist Responds to Critics Regarding Measles and Vaccines
AI failure would be a bit different than human failure.

If a powerful human is obsessed and 'fails' then at worst he gathers some other people, successfully creates an evil empire and dies after a few decades.

Once a powerful AI is obsessed and 'fails', then it can replace as much of the world as it wants with itself, and lives on forever.
Well I think you are talking about actual source code, and not the context of expository or academic writing. In that context, I would not trust comments even if companies had a strict policy of updating comments, because personally I just don't want to be susceptible to that.

It does make me wonder, though, about those computer-generated proofs which are so massive that no human can understand it. If you can run it...?
Right, and for what reason would the flow atop the wing be faster than below?

The equal-time assumption is what leads to the idea that flow on top is faster (and therefore, pressure is lower).