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kleigenfreude

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According to Verlinde, there is no dark matter. Tell me how he's wrong point-by-point. Just because gravity is emergent doesn't mean it still cannot have effects similar to what's been perhaps wrongly attributed to dark matter. You can't just say "Bullet Cluster" and "Dragonfly 44" and piss all over it without explanation.

http://phys.org/news/2016-11-theory-gravity-dark.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2016/11/08/soluti...

https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.02269

Some feedback for the OP:

1. The tester and another team member spent a year developing something that would intercept calls and relay them. Two problems with that: (1) two person years spent, (2) and that sounds like serious NIH (not invented here) syndrome. The problem that should have been solved was everyone spending the time to write better tests and changing code as needed. Instead, they spent a year on a workaround, invented in-house. Was there not anything else out there that did this?

2. The word is "focused", not "focussed".

3. Lack of detail: how exactly does it work beyond that basic diagram?

4. Where's the code for the project? Would it be useful to others?

However, I admire that the OP posted their experience, and it is useful information.

Kaspersky OS 10 years ago

Although I thought the same when I saw it, I think that's unfair. You could just as easily say Symantec/Norton/Microsoft Defender/Windows/Google is CIA/NSA. Since everything's being watched, Kaspersky might be just as much FSB as it is NSA, or any other country that could get its mitts on it. Cisco was definitely completely NSA there for a while, because of the backdoor. China's got Lenovo and every smart appliance, phone, and TV made in China, CIA/NSA have Dell, Korea and Japan have all of their smart TVs, phones, appliances, etc.

I'm being a little sarcastic, as obviously, they aren't watching everyone all of the time, really, and most devices' backdoors, for those that have them, are unused. I'm fine with all of it, for the most part. Yeah, I'm not perfect, and I don't want all my info made public or sold, but we give up much, much more just by everything being online. Our banks, investments, to some extent our medical history, geneology, likes/dislikes, actions, schedule... it's all there. Each of us could be simulated with all of the info they have at this point, but they can't fully- yet. Now they just have to keep and mine all the data- which they do, but it's selective; it'll be a lot less selective about what is analyzed as time goes on. Then one or more AI's will decide what will happen to all that information, and us, if we don't all kill our planet or each other before then.

Best thing to do? Use the hell out of Kaspersky OS. Use Red Flag Linux. Just take all of your banking info and give it to the Nigerian whose been asking for it. If we all just gave up on security, what would humanity do with all of that trust? Ok, maybe not such a good idea... maybe paranoia can help you be a little more secure, for now. However, if it's open source and you build it yourself- then at least you could look at it, if you wanted, and had time.

I downvoted you because you are repeating the tired old trope about implicit biases and agendas.

Hardly tired- biases and agendas caused the deep political divide in the U.S. and Brexit in England. While it's not news to those in the know, it's certainly not something we should hide or stop talking about.

Here's a study for you:

http://siepr.stanford.edu/highlights/sticking-script-rise-bi...

http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/politext.pdf

What order do you teach in?

Not the same for everyone... here's a weak attempt at answering:

Kids:

1. Visual 2D: https://scratch.mit.edu/

2. Visual 3D: https://minecraft.net/en/

3. Interacting with real world: https://www.lego.com/en-us/mindstorms

4. Machine learning (why? it's the future!): http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/22504/what-can-one-...

Adults:

1. Take class(es) on using a computer or phone. Many don't have confidence for things we take for granted.

2. Online tutorials: http://javascript.info/ http://iwanttolearnruby.com/ https://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/Programmers https://netbeans.org/kb/articles/learn-java.html https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa288436(v=vs.71).a... or go to school.

3. Learn enough to contribute to an open source project.

4. Get a job coding or code at your existing job, if allowed. On the job experience is essential.

Some computers are too old and slow to run the JS in the client as the IDE. Either the browser is old and incompatible, or it would just waste precious internet cafe/library computer time for each action.

Either the JS needs to be fast and compliant with much older browsers, or you just do a webform with old HTML tables as structure and so everything server-side.

Then you have the opposite problem in that those with newer computers wouldn't want to use it. So you might have to provide multiple levels of support, similar to how Gmail and OWA have a light client and a heavy client.

This post gets it close, but what we need is the best tools that can run in a web browser on a public library computer. Many don't even have a Chromebook or RPi.

And really what we need are the best tools that can run on the lowest end mobile phone. That way a lot more people could code: https://www.cta.tech/News/Blog/Articles/2015/July/How-Mobile... You could just give away free android phones- that'd be easier than trying to get everyone's clamshell phone to allow coding, and typing on a numeric keypad would be difficult. Also, even using Android- how will those people type? Hmm, maybe we just need to give them all computers or Facebook could set up computing centers. Actually, those luckily enough to get a ride into town and some money might afford 15 minutes in an internet cafe, so maybe if you wrote an app that could multifunction as a coding tutorial and universal web email client application at the same time maybe someone might use it. But definitely a low-end computer, so we're back again to serving some additional people realistically if we just have a webbased IDE that runs on a low-end computer. Should it support IE6 or IE7? Also, internet in many places is dog slow.

Still beyond that what is desperately needed is food, clean water, shelter, clothes, blankets, feminine hygiene products, medical assistance, infrastructure, the ability to grow food, doctors that live nearby with a constant supply of resources, and electricity. There are many parts of the world that don't have these things. Don't give them computers first. It would be intercepted before it gets to them or taken away from them or sold for necessary items. Many can't code, as they're struggling to survive.

Sometime late in the 1960s, in the countryside of Vermont, my sister and I saw in the evening sky three round lights, apparently far-off, perfectly still and unchanging, each the size of a thumbnail held up before the eye. We hadn’t seen them appear—they were just there. They remained for a few moments, and then with instantaneous acceleration vanished over the horizon: in the blink, that is, of an eye.

Which was a jet that had been coming right at them that changed course 90 degrees. Probably the source of 99% of sightings if not more. Anything with three lights (white, red, green) or similar lights that appear to be "rotating" (because they blink, it causes the mind to come up with explanation of the blinking) is likely a human aircraft.

A sufficiently advanced alien civilization tends to fly without FAA-approved lighting.

Yes very crazy.

I conditionally disagree.

If the OP chose to do this, they should fully commit to it as if there is no other way if they want to succeed.

But, if the OP thinks they are crazy (and they definitely have doubts if they posted this here), they should indeed immediately take responsibility to hire a replacement and start interviewing elsewhere, hopefully in such a way that it will limit CV damage.

1) It's 'hard' because you need a lot of 'training data' in order to train models etc.. It's hard to get.

Also, I'd imagine that the data could be bad/incomplete, e.g. data was collected in an inconsistent manner or in the wrong areas, leading to an incorrect solution that fits the data, but doesn't solve the problem.

This is the biggest concern I have in using the data that we've collected to come up with a solution using ML: no one ever intended for the data to be used for the purpose for which I would use it, and is incomplete or incorrect.

However, I think the chance of good things coming from inadequate data outweighs not trying to make use of the data.

I think that Google removed it from their results intentionally. Google has the ability to restrict results, and for it to be weighted so highly after they "fixed" it, and because they gave no indication of what was wrong, I think the "fix" was to remove it from the blacklist.

However, it doesn't change that I use Gmail and will continue to use it. It's still the better product for the money (free).

the absolute best case scenario for the left is a revelation which leads to Trump's impeachment and four years of President Pence.

If it is determined that the F.B.I., votes, voting machines, and/or election results were manipulated, and a case is brought against him to try to invalidate the election and hold another one, he will fight back hard, and there will be chaos, riots, and perhaps a state of emergency declared. Or, the media may go into overdrive trying to gather evidence to have him impeached, but I think that would only serve to fire up those that voted for him.

We could also take a page from Clinton's playbook: keep an eye on him and record his every move, let him shoot himself down, then use that as evidence for the T.V. commercials in the next campaign. However, you risk 4-8 (or more if there is a war) years of damage.

One thing's for certain though, the time is now to start a new political party. With both candidates at record low approval ratings, and hate for the other candidate driving votes, the only reason the Green and Libertarian parties or an independent didn't win was that most of those that are qualified are too scared to run for president. Those people need to get over that fear, take one for the team, and dedicate their life to establishing a political party that is sensible and compassionate.

The Media (and you it seems) almost immediately went into "where did we do wrong and what can we do better" mode. While that's a completely important thing to do, and appropriate for many problem situations, it isn't appropriate here. Here's why:

1. Clinton won the popular vote.

2. Economists think Trump is a bad idea, so on that level, the popular vote was not wrong.

3. The electoral college is outdated, was originally created because southern states wanted to keep slavery: http://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/

Unless the electoral college decides to vote with the American popular vote in this election, very bad things could happen:

* California could try to hold a referendum for succession from the U.S., if they're not too stoned to do so: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-protest-trump-20...

* Riots.

Don't blame yourselves. The electoral college and Trump's campaign taking advantage of it (and the F.B.I.) are the reason that things are going to go bad.

Please put the year, e.g. (2004), at the end of the title when the year is available and the post/article/content was not dated within the last several months. Old content is still relevant, but I was looking forward to something current when I clicked on this, especially after HN just got to talk with him in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851

Also, if anyone wants to try to pair sunspot cycles with programming languages as Alan mentioned in jest, here's some data:

http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages

(Although, Wikipedia's list looks far from complete.)

That's new to me. I work for a company that doesn't work in metric, and the reasons we haven't switched are:

1. The customers use inches.

2. The expensive machines we use are configured in inches.

3. The code we use uses inches.

Stubborn is a bit harsh.

The UK Metrication Association in 2006 estimated the cost of converting road signs to be £80 million. Only the road signs.

Now consider UK and the US as a whole- all of the cost to the government, businesses, non-profits, etc.

Wouldn't Lojban, Elefen, Toki Pona or Ithkuil be better candidates?

I believe that we should use a language that has not only survived the test of time, but is still spoken by its native population and shows its expressiveness by its many words for forms of water. It also had 410 speakers according to a 2011 census, which is more than native speakers of Lojban (20-200), Elefen (30-100), Toki Pona (3-100), or Ithkuil (0-10).

As an example of its practical use compared to Lojban, Elefen, Toki Pona, or Ithkuil, here is a stop sign in Inuinnaqtun:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuinnaqtun#/media/File:Nutqar...

I've not seen a stop sign in Lojban, Elefen, Toki Pona, or Ithkuil. How could that be safe?

Overall, is there really an efficiency gain to be had here?

Not immediately. Any change from the status quo hurts businesses. There is no require change to code, logic, data, etc. that "helps".

You can, however, make changes that inflict serious pain but are good long-term.

Here is the short list of those:

* Everyone going fully metric and use ISO for everything not metric. This would help things not crash into Mars.

* No timezones, no extra second for the year, no leap year, no daylight savings- just steady time. (Disclaimer: even you were to make all data migrations and/or logic changes required, this only eliminates some problems. You still can't depend on the server or client to have accurate time.) Similar to the Star Trek universe.

* Single currency: Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin's not yet ready to be a universal currency, but it has a better chance than any other currency.

* Single language: Inuktitut Inuinnaqtun. ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ.

* Single font: Garamond.

* Single color scheme: Polar. http://www.colorcombos.com/color-schemes/131/ColorCombo131.h...

* Single band/song/note: Chicago, If You Leave Me Now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlKaVFqxERk , B.

* Single stare: long, deep, soulful.

When I was comparing cars in the last year, the manual transmission variant of a car was cheaper than the automatic variant. Why would they continue to make a car that cost more to build and charge less? I think maybe your experience and knowledge in this is specific, but you're generalizing? Otherwise, large automakers are doing non-sensical things...

The Pac-Man Dossier 10 years ago

Note: this page has been there for years. Here is the non-print version dated 2009:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3938/the_pacman_dossie...

Oddly this same link to the print version was posted 5 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12849017

And several other times:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=the%20pac-man%20dossier&sort=b...

It looks like it was moved to Gamasutra at some point or perhaps was posted to both Gamasutra and the personal blog.

It's cool, for sure, and should be posted over and over, but I find it a little suspect to link to the print version; that sort of thing could be abused, because people could continue to post variations on the same link every day on HN. That could be bad, imo.

only adds ... cost.

Note: while I think this is probably true for electric vehicles that don't offer this option, this is inaccurate for gas vehicles. Manual transmission cars are still cheaper currently and are sold by major manufacturers. Major manufacturers will typically pass on additional cost to the consumer.

Why add a bunch of unnecessary complexity?

1. By adding an additional lower gear to an electric truck/4x4, it could provide even more torque at low gears to allow it to carry more load and go up steeper inclines.

2. By adding an additional higher gear to a car, it could go faster and accelerate faster at the top RPM end(s). For example, see how the acceleration drops quickly. That wouldn't happen if you were to keep switching to higher gears:

http://static4.consumerreportscdn.org/content/dam/cro/news_a...

The reason they didn't do this in the Tesla was a technical problem, but that could be remedied:

https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/adding-second-gear-spe...

"The roadster originally was developed using a two speed gear box. However, they had problems getting it to handle the massive instantaneous torque that the motor could produce, so they went for a single speed."

The reason that carmakers dropped manual was not the number of moving parts or that they wore out quicker. If anything, the car wearing out faster sells more cars and service. Instead, it was because not enough customers wanted manual:

http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2015/02/why-lamborghini-t...

For a more in-depth analysis of this, see:

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-market-for-manual-transmiss...

However, there are still many that prefer manual, despite things potentially wearing out more quickly. And- you don't have to design a clutch that allows the driver to wear out things more quickly. You could still allow the driver to select the level of torque but only adjust for that in a way that would not cause damage.