discardorama

Apologies... I don't know what got into me, to bring this up.

The author's notion of a "dataset" is weird. Under "Finance", there's a link to Google Finance page ( http://finance.google.com/ ). How is that a "dataset" ??

I hate to be pedantic, but: the size of the salt is directly proportional to the amount of the message you want to consume (because, as you know, in food there's a certain fixed ratio of salt to other ingredients).

So if you want a person to not accept the premise, you should say "take it with a tiny grain of salt", which implies "accept very little of the premise".

I wish I had taken a photo. It looked like a single tree split in half! Except, they weren't right next to each other, but about 12 - 15 feet apart. One tree had all its branches to the left; the other, all to the right.

I didn't mean to imply that the sailors are cowboys; but that people like Trump and others are cowboys. It is easy to be a cowboy when you have nothing to lose: your kids won't be fighting the war(s), coming home scarred for life (mentally, if not physically).

FTA: "“You see how the thick branches point away from each other? That’s so they don’t block their buddy’s light.”"

I noticed this in some tall trees in the Sequoyah National Park too. I remember thinking to myself: how do they know about the presence of each other?

While many scientists will grimace at the anthropomorphism in the narrative, you have to ask: why can't we use similar terms as ours to describe the trees' interactions? Who is to say that vocalizing some predetermined sounds is the only way to "talk"?

Just like any other country, there are factions in the Iranian government that are unhappy about the rapprochement between US and Iran. They probably profited handsomely from the sanctions (just like Saddam and his sons did in Iraq, years ago). They're unhappy. And they're making these ridiculous provocative gestures to provoke the US.

The last thing that US needs to do is get provoked. Ignoring the idiots is the right course of action. But will the US do that? I doubt it. Because we have our own set of idiots too, who love to play cowboys.

If I'm reading the situation correctly, the foreign workers are NOT on H1-B, but on internal "company transfer" visas. The way it works (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong) is that the company, say TCS, brings in workers from India in the B1 (?) visa category, which is unlimited and for internal company transfers. It then sends these workers (who are still working for TCS) to the client's site. This way, they avoid the H1-B mess altogether.

It's a feature request. Without access to the innards, I don't think an extension would be able to do it.

Meanwhile, I sit here with the firefox usage pegged at 50%, and no way to tell which tab is killing the CPU. There's a 9-year-old bug open, requesting this feature. Now, before the fanboys jump in and say "it's open source, why don't you do it?", I'll admit that my hacking skillz are not enough to dive into Firefox source.

If you start with the same weights, then the neurons with similar connections will learn the same things. Random initialization is what gets them started in different directions.

It looks like the WSJ has it in for Theranos. Is there some backstory behind it? Did Elizabeth do something to Murdock?

FTA: "In another study published in October, Scher found that patients with psoriatic arthritis, another kind of autoimmune joint disease, had significantly lower levels of other types of intestinal bacteria."

But what if the bacteria were destroyed by the body first, after being targeted by the body's own immune defenses?

Side question: how expensive is it to get your water tested? I live in an older house, and all this talk has made me concerned about what's coming from my pipes, since they are > 100 yrs old.

Anybody who wants to think about "saving" Yahoo must read PG's essay on Yahoo: http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html It's a bit dated but relevant.

2 steps must be taken first before you can talk about "saving" Yahoo:

1. Get rid of 2/3 of the managers

2. Make engineers the "top dogs" in the company.

> 1. Cops make OK money compared to an average citizen, but not GREAT money. Their retirement is often tied to employment with a particular city, county, etc. Too many disciplinary actions, or one really big one, will result in being fired, meaning you've also lost your retirement investment.

Well, you just have to look at SF's salary database to see that cops don't make "OK money", but "pretty good" money.

http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2014/san-francisco...

Or, if you just want all employees with "police" in the name or title: http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=san-fran...

If you can reliably beat Vegas, why not put real money into it and make lots of money?

O-1 is for people with a demonstrated extraordinary ability. When they came over, Nadella, Pichai, Khosla, etc. were just students fresh out of college.

> A company should and MUST make huge profits off helping poor, this is the only sustainable way by which people will be able to come out of poverty.

And this is why in large parts of the world mothers have come to believe that formula is better than breast milk.

And this is why Monsanto ruins the lives of farmers, driving many to suicide.

OK, I wasted some time reading that. Let me dissect a few points he makes.

> We have collections of free basic books. They’re called libraries. They don’t contain every book, but they still provide a world of good.

They're called "public" libraries; not every library is free. I remember once trying to enter Stanford's library (Green?), and they refused to let me in without a Stanford ID.

> We have free basic healthcare.

In America?!? Hell no. You have emergency room care, and it is NOT free. Medical bills are the #1 cause of bankruptcies in America.

> And in the 21st century, everyone also deserves access to the tools and information that can help them to achieve all those other public services, and all their fundamental social and economic rights.

I couldn't even parse this sentence. What does "achieve" mean here?

The problem with people like Zuckerberg is that they think the poor would be fine with a walled garden Internet.

Imagine if Coke came along and said: we'll provide all poor people who don't have access to clean water with free Coke. This "free basics" seems the same.

You want to spread Internet to everyone in India? Let the Government install free WiFi spots; maybe in every railway station? Give people access to free WiFi at, say, 256kbps. The Government of India should be stepping in to make the Internet free and accessible, not some billionaire sitting in Palo Alto, sipping his latte.

Remember, ISIS wouldn't be around if it weren't for the US.

And even as late as 2014, the Saudis prevented the US from attacking ISIS.

So the US helps create ISIS and stands by while it consolidates power ... and I am supposed to pay for it with my First Amendment?!?

Money quote from the article: “Drug enforcement as we know it,” Herrod [the DEA agent] told me, “is not working.”

> I don't see how your experience where most could not afford any access (let alone restricted access) to basic telephony applies to this scenario where a restricted service is being given for free.

You're missing the point completely. My point is: we are on the path to progress. It's going the right way for the future of the people. But Facebook wants to derail it and lock you into their ecosystem. In the long run, this is detrimental for everyone.

People who are here, posting for FB, obviously have internet freedom; so what they're basically saying is, the poor should not have the same freedoms that I am enjoying.

You should really think before spouting off, and you should honestly admit if you're biased in this instance.

I've followed India's cellular revolution with interest, seeing (as I mentioned earlier) I grew up when India had almost no phones. My dad, due to his work, always had a phone; and I, being the youngest, was the errand-boy, running to distant houses to tell people that there was a phone call for them, and that the caller would call back in 20 minutes, so please can you come quickly?

The reason cellphones took off in India is that the government tried (some would say, not hard enough) to level the playing field and to remove barriers. What if you could make calls on Reliance to only Reliance folks? Or what if Airtel charged you Rs. 20/min for calls to Docomo, but Rs 1/min to calls on Airtel? This kind of balkanization would be disastrous to the cellphone users.

Similarly, if you want internet use to spread, you cannot do that by placing barriers and toll gates all around. It has to be unfettered access. Sure, this "basics" thing may be available right _now_ ; but users will then be locked into one mode of operation forever.

People who are arguing against FB are not just "intellectuals"; but people who have a lot of experience. I, for one, remember when the first Internet line to India was hooked up: it was a 56K modem, a Trailblazer. For the entire country of India. From there, we have come to terabits/sec fibre lines. So yes, I do know something about the Internet.

> Let us not judge from Intellectual Ivory towers,

Labeling someone who disagrees with you as being in an "ivory tower" is basically an ad-hominem. Argue the merits, not the source.

> the facts on the ground are 80% of Indians do not have internet access. You sometimes have to try "impure" methods. The question is still up in the air, whether FB Basics is gateway to full internet or if it is a walled garden. Either way, it is better than No Access.

What if a pharma company came and said, "you know, this medicine causes birth defects, but it's OK to push it on Indians because 80% lack decent medication"... would you be for it?

India is making tremendous progress in bringing connectivity to the people. I grew up in an India where telephones were so scarce, that the waiting list for a landline phone was more than 10 years. People in villages had absolutely no access to phones at all; reaching a phone meant taking a bus/train to the nearest big town, and going to a PCO.

And yet today, almost everyone has a cellphone.

By pushing this "walled garden" to the people, FB will capture the market and derail the train of progress. FB has the ability to pay local carriers; but does HN?

I have a feeling that this is how these agencies skirt the law: agency X is not allowed to do "A", so it helps agency B do it, and share the findings with X. And vice versa. So the GCHQ spies on Americans willy-nilly, and the Americans spy on Brits, with full knowledge of each other.

Street noise can slowly wear down your nerves.

I live in SF, and when I was dating my GF (now wife), she had an apt on a busy street (Oak Street); I live in an in-law garden unit. The first time I slept over at her place, I got barely any sleep. When she slept over at my place, all she heard was birds, leaves and the very occasional Harley or emergency vehicle. When she slept over, she woke up feeling so much better. So when it came time to move in together, there was no question where she wanted to be!

On that topic: I wish we could have acoustical limits on vehicle noise. Those loud motorcycles with the fat pipes: they seriously need to control those.

What if the sleeper "agent" is employed by the NSA?

We would all love to see how it went down. But I'd bet good money that Juniper will not reveal what happened.

Sometimes I wonder how difficult is it for $TLA to send their employees off into the world (on their payroll), as sleeper coders, to be activated whenever a small piece of code needs to be inserted in the right place. You don't even need too many; just a handful would be sufficient.

> India still has terrible public education, so it may take them longer to catch up.

India is a _very_ big country; as big as all of Europe, if not bigger. There are parts of India that are highly educated; in fact, the southern Indian state of Kerala has nearly 100% literacy. And corruption is plentiful there too.