skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Out of curiosity, with a regular normal distribution I wonder what the probability is that the most recent point finds a problem. I guess you could calculate these things separately for an approximation, but I'd probably just want to simulate it...

For a first cut:

- Rule 1: 0.3% of samples are more than 3 standard deviations of the mean.

- Rule 2: 1/2^8 = 0.4% chance the previous 8 points were on the same side of the mean as the most recent one.

- Rule 5: 2.5% chance of being above 2sd on either side, 3 choose 2 is 3, 2 sides, so 0.375% of exactly 2. "2 or 3" is not much higher.

- Rule 6: More than 0.55%, if I've done my maths right.

- Rule 7: 0.3%

I guess you're going to get a lot of false positives if you're sampling reasonably frequently -- maybe one in 50?
Oh, that's super good. I'll definitely include that in the post. The funny part is that this itself is a meme but it's like sharing a vaccine rather than a pathogen. I really like the disease analogy.

Thank you!
Could it be that the "problem" in this case is that Windows has been so popular over such a long period? The popularity not only makes it a desirable target for malware but also makes it a desirable platform for cookie-cutter anti-malware programs, many of which are not worth the bits they are printed on. Another part of the problem is that many people are still running old versions of Windows (some even before User Account Control was implemented), which Microsoft is clearly trying to resolve here with the gratis Windows 10 upgrades.
I have so much delay playing this, its almost impossible to play.
Why I use Make
You're right on all the points there.

I did find that you can play recruiters off against each other quite easily to negotiate a higher rate. Also when you sign, you sign with the company not the recruiter and have a solid contract in place. Never work for sharecropper recruiters like some of the bigger ones.

If they want to get rid of you after 2 weeks, make sure there's an exit fee. That is usually 100% for me if under 6 months of contract left. I did 2 weeks at a company on a 3 monther at £550 a day and completed the work but was paid for the 3 months.

The particular sector I worked in was finance and that is still heavily recruiter driven unfortunately.
Because most startups are bad startups. If you're working for a startup, you're probably working for a bad startup.
Interesting, is that via an agency or via your own clients? I'm a Tech Lead and would like to start contracting at some point.
> There are also bugs that are feature proposals that do have patches attached, but there is a general hesitation to accept changes like that because there is concern that they aren't useful, won't mesh with other similar language features, or that they will cause backward incompatibilities. It is hard to take patches without breaking things all the time.

Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1172/
one tip i always liked was: wake up take a shower and get dressed for work before you go to your home-office. it seems to make people more focused and able to stay for 8 hours
Yes, the "Liberal" party in Australia are about as "liberal" as the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" were "socialist".

Political parties like "Branding" words with capital letters to words so the original definition becomes blurred, if not directly contradictory to the original meaning.

EDIT: Remove "but" from first sentence. I'm agreeing with @TheSpiceIsLife :-)
> basic guidelines for writing good fiction

I think what 'good fiction' is varies from person to person. Those for whom realistic motivations etc are important will like books that other fans of 'rational' fiction like; but there's tons of hugely popular books that have none of this.

Assuming that people making bad choices for plot reasons bothers everyone is just typical mind fallacy; clearly it doesn't, otherwise many of the most popular books wouldn't sell.
The Case of the Quake Cheats (1999)
How did you get your whole site running in just 3 requests?
Pocket is not only piece shoved down user's throats - just one of the most obvious ones. There are also at least Hello and Sync, and then lots of less noticeable stuff.
> The problem is that removing idiocy doesn't automatically make a piece of fiction good.

Completely agree with your post, and especially this. I also second the Ted Chiang recommendation: as far as I can tell he's in a class of his own (and if there's anyone else out there like him, I'd love to know!). "Stories of Your Life and Others" is a good place to start and available on Kindle.

On the topic of rationality generally, I do find some author's have such a precise, rational voice that it's actually almost a relief to read them. I can think of a few non-fiction authors in particular, all somewhat controversial, but they also all speak with a refreshing clarity. It would be nice to see that more in fiction too.
I read a quote once from a guy that became very wealthy when his company went public. He too became a magnet for fake friends. He said that the thing with fake friends is they are so much better at acting like friends than real friends. No doubt Kim knows that feeling.
The future .. nice summary
P2P fights are too much a case of "the bigger one wins" IMHO. The ships aren't maneuverable enough given the high rate of fire.
In the 14 months you've had the company registered, have you had any dealing with Inland Revenue inquiring about your accounts or coming to check up on you? I'm asking because at my current work they were always coming to check since the business got its funding. There was no wrong doing of course, but it did waste a lot of everybody's time.
I usually use this tutorial as a help if I write Makefiles: http://www.ploxiln.net/make.html
In case anybody else is wondering what this is about:

Agar.io is a massively multiplayer action browser game played from a top-down perspective (Wikipedia)
wasn't this here only a few days ago already?

fwiw i've jumped into this sort of work before without any savings or backup plans... it was much more 'exciting'. XD
Viruses infect executable files (or other files that can potentially contain executable code) while non-virus malware infects machines, browsers, or other types of "hosts".
the controls though...
Could you list some good examples? I was wondering about Niven, Egan and others and realising that I tend to enjoy my fiction without consciously analysing it.

(Just realised who I'm replying to... maybe you could blog about it)
> I think half of the difficulty in any real world problem would be how to design the reward function.

That's exactly what MIRI's trying to do ;)

> do we really know that choosing the action that has the best weighted reward over the set on "world model algorithms" (hypothesis), produces actions that actually are intelligent?

As far as AIXI is concerned, this is the definition of an "intelligent action": that which leads to the largest expected utility over the agent's lifetime. It's fine to disagree with this definition, but one of the reasons to define AIXI at all is to have something concrete to point at, rather than spending decades debating these sorts of quasi-philosophical questions (note that I've carefully chosen words like "can be reasonably considered" rather than "is").

> I am thinking, maybe the shortest "world model algorithms", which are given the largest weight, are just mostly stupid.

The Solomonoff prior used by AIXI dominates all computable priors; in other words, even if these world models are stupid, no computable algorithm (including humans) can do better overall.

> And there is the No Free Lunch theorem, which states that averaging over all possibilities, while may sound clever, produces just garbage (i.e. no better than random guess).

The No Free Lunch theorem is a Mathematical curiosity with no particular relevance to the world. In particular, it completely ignores computational complexity: it gives equal weight to all (computationally) simple explanations (eg. "there is a star orbiting the Earth, it will keep orbiting" and "the Earth is spinning near to a star, and will keep spinning"), as well as to all (computationally) complicated explanations (eg. "the atmosphere has been bombarded by cosmic rays which, by sheer chance, have an effect which looks like a star, but it's unlikely for that coincidence to continue" and "the Earth is spinning near to a star, but tomorrow at 13:48 GMT the Martians, who have managed to elude all of our telescopes and probes, will attack the Earth with a weapon which switches the direction of rotation"), as well as all incomputable explanations. Trying to predict anything in such situations is clearly futile, which is basically what the NFL theorem says; yet such situations can never actually arise outside of though experiments.

Although AIXI itself is incomputable, it is specifically defined to interact with computable environments, so No Free Lunch doesn't apply.
Sonic Pi v2.6 codenamed Algorave released
Imagine if we could bring them to court over bundling malicious software with their OS and not giving the user a choice.
I'm spending some time traveling in Thailand. While topping off my phone data package, I noticed that you can pay for a "Facebook and Line only" data package. [1]

Locals have told me the role that Facebook and Instagram play in eCommerce here is different from how it is in the states. Many physical product merchants will set up a Facebook or Instagram account for their store. They'll post their products as pictures, take payments via Line, and then ship merchandise once cash is received. Since Facebook and IG are eCommerce platforms, giving FB + limited net access means more than just accessing a social network.

I too, find it off-putting that Facebook markets this project as charity work, but I think the picture is grey at best and at worst.

[1] translate.google.co.th/translate?hl=en&sl=th&u=http://truemoveh.truecorp.co.th/topping/&prev=search
As Patents Expire, Farmers Plant Generic GMOs
Freeagent have always responded pretty immediately but it's best to get an accountant [1] that supports Freeagent and you are then effectively paying for support. They use Get Satisfaction which is community and vendor run support [2].

It makes the accountants life a lot easier too (they get a slightly restricted login).

[1] http://www.freeagent.com/find-an-accountant

[2] http://community.freeagent.com/freeagent
The Art of Bug Tracking
> Microsoft is generally one of the most restrictive companies when it comes to sharing data.

Citation needed?
> No less so than if your friends, family, coworkers, and society at large may be subtly persuading you in a different direction than what you would've taken if they hadn't been making the suggestions to influence you.

I'd add to that list things like Toxoplasma gondii.[1] Who knows, maybe it is the viruses controlling us all. Maybe there are behaviour modifying viruses that cause little to no overt symptoms of infection, or maybe the viruses are changing the DNA of bacteria that impact all living creatures microbiomes. Scary stuff.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii
Updated list of my GNU Make articles
If we were to replace coffee beans, we wouldn't just offer them a No-Doze; I imagine you develop coffee flavors that could be used to reproduce the actual beverage. No reason for instant coffee to ever have been coffee beans in the first place if you can do the flavors right.

Or, the culture just adjusts to a different caffeine-infused hot drink.
white on white text \w Javascript. Why can't you use black by default? And no, I don't want to enable Javascript just to read an article.
I'm using Slack + Gitlab + Pivotal. Overcoming resistance depends on the source. Managers like that they don't need to chase engineers for updates. Engineers like that everything is integrated, so if they 'git push' while referencing the Pivotal story ID, the story will be updated/finished/delivered.

Email in profile, feel free to get in touch if you want more detail.
The world in BNW does not like (innovative) creation, it is aimed at stability. You should do your job and enjoy mindlessly afterwards, either doing games or using somma. I.e.: "Ending is better than mending.", "...they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave" -> Nowadays we have commercials to do that, the conditioning. Al least that is how I see it, many things we have nowadays can be extrapolated quite nicely into BNW. We do it to ourselves, by catering to our primal, short-term rewards systems we get less time to "create", instead we watch sitcoms. (I'm overreacting I bit, I know it's not so black and white.)
Top  10 Wireless Hacking Tools in Market
Few weeks ago I wrote an article about Wireless Hacking Tools. Link - http://www.ehacking.net/2015/06/top-10-wireless-hacking-tools.html

Please do share your thoughts how you find it.
That was my point exactly, hence the reference to 'Orwellian'.
Images are in data: urls (so the three requests to generate the page are really only one request to the server), stylesheet is embedded in the page, twitter button hacked until it no longer needed twitter before you click on it, no eye candy beyond the minimum required to get the site working, no external 'fancy' fonts because browser ship with plenty of them to get the message across.

I'm still playing code-golf on the stylesheet to make it smaller. 14 Kilo bytes transferred data on that page in total, load time start-to-end 150 ms or so depending on the speed of your connection.

I don't like bloat and I like my website to load fast. I also think that's more considerate of visitors on mobile who usually have to pay for their bandwidth and have less of it as well as third world countries. On top of that I don't like external resources controlled by others for tracking or other purposes beyond my control so no trackers, analytics or other bull-shit. It's finished when there is nothing left to remove while still keeping the look exactly like it is right now.

You don't need 'page transitions' when the pages load instantaneously :)
Nope these gobshites went back over my past posts and downvoted those too

Fuck them and their fucking scam
Perhaps this is my inner Ultra-American speaking, but I think it's perfectly fine for people to feel aligned, even owned, by their brands.

Hell, look around you. How many items do you see that were NOT made by a corporation?

The brands I choose are a reflection of my personality. I shop at Wegmans instead of having groceries delivered because I like their quality and I can always run into people I know. I buy Apple products because they appear more integrated and polished than other consumer tech, and that is an important aspect of my personality. I'm not a shill (ok, I did work for Apple a few years ago), but rather I am so content with the brands I choose that I enjoy telling others about them.
When it comes to Android vs iOS I think technical or budget reasons are less important than philosophies. Apple got very paternalistic towards their users and this has always manifested in what they allow you to do with their devices. iOS has always had limitations, being defective by design. And so Apple's customers ultimately end up choosing something else, or end up believing that Apple's actions are for their own good. And Android is in many ways iOS's opposite.

What really bothers me is that people feel the need to defend their choice, their investment and so they end up believing things and adopting an apologetic attitude just for the sake of thinking about their favorite company as being the good guys. And this is much more than the effects of marketing.
the death of art
See also: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki_Atheism_FAQ_for_th... which was written especially for people in this circumstance.
I can speak only for Singapore, but banks here require very high deposits and minimum required balance if you are not a Singaporean company (at least when I asked, it was ~$50,000 - still better than UBS in Switzerland who wanted CHF 100,000 four years ago).

We're one half UK resident, one half not, and the UK bank put up the fraud check, which required about 30 pages of paperwork including three different proofs of ID copied and authenticated by a notary public (cost me $30). They were and are ultra slow and do not accept any form of internet communication - only snail mail, phone and in-person counter service.
Amazing that 15 years ago I was making more than 400 pd (contract was actually 45 ph, and you could push overtime if you wanted) and I was pretty junior at the time. And I was only paying 130 pw rent in Zone 2.

Ah, boom times. Don't you just love 'em, and miss 'em when they're gone?

edit : original post had a calculation mistake in it.
I've been doing it for 4 years now and I absolutely love it! but please be mindful of your self. Find out what triggers you to get distracted and remove it as quickly as it happens.
Personally I try to keep a work and a play computer.
Keep office hours. Make sure you and everybody else around you understands that you are at work. Even when it's polite to interact with somebody (say a neighbor comes by or your wife needs help with a heavy bag) it still counts as an interruption and it's very very hard to know where to stop. Take a look at the concept of "bright lines".
> What really bothers me is that people feel the need to defend their choice, their investment and so they end up believing things and adopting an apologetic attitude just for the sake of thinking about their favorite company as being the good guys.

That's because branding contains all kinds of self-identification hooks.
I have a 12-week notice period (UK government), as do most of my friends (mostly finance). We'd all started on 4 weeks as junior developers, but it had been increased with promotions.
In Germany, the employer's contribution to social security is tax-free for the employee and is a fully deductible cost for the employer.

Other benefits (company car, apartment, fuel etc.) are subject to employee's income tax beyond a certain threshold.

Edit: Taking a step back, there is simply a fundamental difference between taxes and payments to social security / different insurances.
It works with the arrow keys for me.
Windows 10: Solitaire Needs Annual Subscription
Building the SQLite FTS5 Search Extension
> Perhaps this is my inner Ultra-American speaking, but I think it's perfectly fine for people to feel aligned, even owned, by their brands.

I strongly disagree with that. Brands should not 'own people', brands should be at best an indicator of what you can expect from a product quality or service wise.

And what's being American (Ultra-American??) got to do with it?

> Hell, look around you. How many items do you see that were NOT made by a corporation?

That does not have anything to do with it. Having corporations produce goods is fine, having them try to hack our brains is not.

> The brands I choose are a reflection of my personality.

Please read 'The Space Merchants', one of my favorite books which is a frontal assault on that one sentence.
A quick review of the BIND9 code
I hope he took from his down swing how to recognize these. That's a huge negative impact on one's life, having such kind of friends. Even on the good days they suck out your energy without you realizing it. And again, I think even as such a friend you don't have a happy life.
What to say when they ask you: how much do you make
The math suggests you were working 13 hour days? Are you sure that's correct?
51% of mobile developers and 59% of those in IoT not making sustainable income
...but it is still OK for the US to subsidise agriculture.
In my experience, sometimes they wanted more skill and experience for a permanent role than they did for a contractor. I worked as a contractor and had to fill headcount, and the process was different for a contractor and a permanent. Contractors are much simpler to get rid of if they don't turn out, so hiring decisions were made faster. Permanent people being hired had to be of a higher standard.

This doesn't mean that you can get away with being a junior in a senior role, but it might mean there is more of a focus on technical skills rather than university qualifications, that type of thing.

There are some crap contractors floating about the system and some crap permanent employees. And vice versa.

The working conditions are almost identical, except that in a downturn the contractors will be first out the door. They also get to avoid 'company building' meetings and crap like that.
Are private servers 100% reliable?
Not believing in capitalism is like not believing in evolution. The fringes on both sides are ridiculous. Both require willful disregard of reality.
Another attempt at producing a machine that can fly for months. The Pluto project[1]:

"The nuclear engine could, in principle, operate for months, so a Pluto cruise missile could be left airborne for a prolonged time before being directed to carry out its attack."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
Exploits for popular SSL libraries are discovered all the time. Surely you haven't already forgotten about "heartbleed" and the vulnerabilities that followed. I'm sure the NSA knows of several other exploits that they are keeping quiet so they can keep using it, and they may even attempt to deliberately introduce vulnerabilities. Furthermore, even without an exploit TLS connections can be decrypted by anyone with a trusted CA private key that can issue certificates. Connections could be decrypted plausibly by privileged employees of ANY certificate authority, disgruntled government officials that can compel those CAs to turn over keys, etc.

I know you're just joking (and I even laughed) but it's worth pointing out that the scenario I describe is very realistic.
Upvote because a reasonable discussion point, but I deeply disagree. If you want easy control you can already play agario. Having some more complex games is also good.
The Dart team is not a large team and not an arrogant team. Led by Lars Bak, they thought to try and make something that ran faster than JavaScript by doing away with 'monkey patching.' Lars and Kasper Lund took all their experience working with V8 to make something that avoided the bottlenecks. Gilad Bracha designed a good working language and it works without many "gotchas" along the way. It's a pleasure to use. The Google Chrome team was not enthusiastic about it even before Blink, as you correctly state, but what I was trying to say is that if the industry hadn't reacted so negatively to Dart because of some percieved ulterior motive by Google, the Chrome team may have been persuaded to put some more thought into it and make it happen. Lars Bak, Kaser Lund, Gilad Bracha and the rest of the team did something cool and don't get any props for it because they work for Google. Such is life. I recall Mozilla disliked it the most, which I assume was driven by you, the creator of JavaScript. Dart was never going to replace JavaScript you know, because even then they were saying that anything that can be written in JavaScript, will be written in JavaScript. JavaScript is unstoppable, but people should look at Dart for what it is, another tool in the toolkit.
It's not a war. It's evolution. Nature, red in tooth and claw. Ideas live in you, and they die in you, and they evolve. Reproduction: ideas spread, through words, deeds, and creations. Variation: communication inherently introduces errors, and thoughts change over time. Selection: ideas that are forgotten die without spreading. With reproduction, variation, and selection, you have evolution.

Religion is a coherent, tenacious, communal meme with unbelievably virulent reproductive mechanisms. A school is a selective breeding program. And advertisements are memetic WMDs, colossal infectious vectors with powerful memetic payloads. Your goal is to infect minds with your idea and to keep them infected long enough for them to take the actions dictated by your meme. Your meme has to be able to reproduce. Your meme has to be transmitted without variation. Your meme has to be selected.