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There needs to be a utility that will set the keymap for you, given a photo of your keyboard.

indraxon Inform: A Language for Interactive Fiction

This seems like the Best. Language. Ever. Obviously not for everything, but the readability of code is off the chart, and IDE and the integration of the documentation with the IDE is really...neat.

I've been looking at this for a few hours, and I am floored.

Am I missing something in existing IDE's?

indraxon Basic income: the water room analogy

If there are millions of people trying to live on $1000 per month, then there is huge opportunity in pricing a package of goods that fit within that budget.

indraxon USB Killer

The security problems with USB are things that need to be fixed.

I think every other non-optical port on your computer is just as susceptible to electrical attack. The only real difference is that USB provides its own power.

This is a human delivery mechanism for a physical attack. You could make a DVI cable that was covertly a water hose, but that's not a DVI problem.

indraxon Show HN: Opinionated Dress Color Simulation

In my very limited sample, if you invert the image colors, you'll see the same colors in the different parts of the dress.

I see it blue-black, inverted it looks like blue lace with dark fabric. If I saw this first I would think that the original lace would look yellow and the fabric light.

indraxon Machine intelligence, part 1

Here are some hard problems to crack then, in particular Value Learning: https://intelligence.org/research-guide/

indraxon Ask HN: Do you think software can be art?

Suppose I write a cellular automaton in which after some complex dance all the white cells are turned dark. This could clearly be art.

Suppose that I write the software to implement this CA, but not display it, just jostle the memory locations. That is still art.

Suppose the rules are such that it is clear that all the on cells will be turned off, with some perhaps complex interactions in between. Then you don't need to run the code to see the art, just read the source.

I think any implementation of Towers of Hanoi is art.

indraxon What Books Could Be Used to Rebuild Civilization?

There is a lot of implicit baggage there still, for example in saying that punishments are a thing courts can do, and that they are a response to crimes.

The paints 'civilized law' as authoritarian, vengance based, and using primitive means to try to alter behavior.

indraxon “RNG broken for last 4 months”

Coming from just the data, I'd say impossible. It would be like achieving infinite compression on any pseudorandom data. There's no practical way to search through all possible short algorithms that could generate it.

With knowledge of the algorithm, you can do a lot more.

indraxon Could driverless cars own themselves?

>What if there is a flaw in the decision software and something goes horribly wrong ?

This argument applies to people too and we have ways to deal with it other than people being owned.

indraxon WoSign: Free two-year multi-domain SSL certificate

EFF is going to be giving out free certs starting later this year. https://letsencrypt.org/ It's not too surprising someone would lower prices now to adjust.

This is becoming a freemium product.

indraxon Why Every Movie Looks Sort of Orange and Blue

Using a web search engine is asking for rankings based on web structure, not rankings based on product quality.

You might think it's bad to take advantage of that, but refraining from doing so doesn't likely yield a fair product quality ranking, just some different unfair rating.

Our fitness function is broken.

indraxon Gamma-ray bursts are a threat to life

>Produced for CERN by IOP Publishing

>©COPYRIGHT CERN 2007 for the content of CERN Courier and images and logos identifying CERN.

>©COPYRIGHT IOP 2007 for the design, format and typography of the CERN Courier Web Pages, ...

The author appears to be an astrophysicist, and you may know CERN from such products as the Large Hadron Collider and the World Wide Web.

indraxon Meant to Keep Mosquitos Out, Nets Are Used to Haul Fish In

This reminds me of a recent article about an abandoned flooded mall. Fish were added to control the mosquito population.

So what happens to the mosquitoes when the fish population drops?

indraxon Google discloses three severe vulnerabilities in Apple OS X

The actual usage is more fluid than that. It wouldn't be a common term if it actually only applied for the first day of every vulnerability being known.

"An attack on a software flaw that occurs before the software's developers have had time to develop a patch for the flaw is often known as a zero-day exploit."

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/zero-day-exploit-definition,news...

indraxon Microsoft is building a new browser as part of its Windows 10 push

Sometimes we have to decide for ourselves when 'sometimes' is.

indraxon Math from Three to Seven: Chapters One and Three [pdf]

On coins and buttons: Perhaps the children are intuitively comparing the areas of the convex hulls, a thing humans are good at, is an interesting mathematical problem, and could be the basis of interesting alternative mathematics.

You could have a whole set of sessions with children exploring different arrangements of coins and noting that no matter how many you add within the hull, you don't get any 'more coin' (altering the plurality may help adults understand this problem.) If you have some button[s] and much more coin[s], can you add just one coin so that you have more coin than button? How far away do you need to add it?

indraxon MOOCs are closed platforms and probably doomed

Yes. A rough analogy:

  College   : Proper MOOC  : Closed MOOC ::
  Newspaper : Online Media : Paywalls

indraxon The Humane Representation of Thought [video]

I don't know why anyone has to be 'responsible' for an inhumanity to exist. One actor taking the liberties of another actor is not required.

A) Our capabilities are being restricted by the circumstances we find ourselves in. A dog happens to be in a cage built hundreds of years ago. There must be some words to describe this situation, I think inhumane applies.

B) Now we can start opening the cage.

Edit: our natural environment is inhumane and awful. Your commentary seems to heavily favor the status quo in a way I can't relate to.

The additional inhumanity of media is from 2 things: the fact that information processing has been mostly limited, and that information processing has become really important lately, so a lot of people are spending a lot of their time in that limited environment.

indraxon The Humane Representation of Thought [video]

The analogy was an example of something that is inhumane for analogous reasons that restricted media is inhumane. It doesn't allow for full dog-life or full intellectual-life, some critical and important experiences and behaviors are excluded.

Changing the analogy to a fish in a tank suggests an assertion that these other intellectual modes are not important for human experience and wouldn't make communication more effective and efficient.

To tweak the analogy further: Otters are very good at swimming, but their habitats should include land.

indraxon North Korea, Denying Sony Attack, Proposes Joint Investigation With U.S.

This isn't a good enough excuse to intervene.

North Korea routinely provides much better reasons to intervene.

indraxon The Myth of AI

>it apparently lacks the ability to evaluate or set its own goals.

The AI would have to evaluate the goal by some standard, so 'maximize paperclips' is a proxy for whatever goals get a high evaluation from the standard. Getting the standard right presents essentially the same problem as setting the goal.

Putting in 'a need to be intellectually satisfied by the complexity of your end product' is complicated and still wouldn't save humanity.

indraxon Why you can’t get strippers’ names with public records requests

Commercial activity does not remove first amendment protections. (See: Newspapers)

indraxon On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

>What is so wrong with giving the unemployed a JOB rather than just money?

Who decides what jobs are available? Who decide who gets which jobs?

By giving a job instead of money, you are using up a significant chunk of the labor pool. You need an additional chunk to figure out how to allocate it, and are then relying on them to allocate it well. To build something, you are also paying for and using up capital.

By giving money, people are free to use their time in whatever way is most valuable to them, only using up the resources they need to live, and those resources get allocated by market forces.

indraxon Docker and Microsoft partner to drive adoption of distributed applications

At one level, yes.

At a lower level, this is strengthening a proprietary platform, and might lower adoption of FOSS platforms.

At a higher level, co-opting an open source technology to deliver closed source software may indicate a strategic flaw in our approach to FOSS. On Microsoft's part this is clearly a continuation of 'embrace and extend'.

They'll use docker to provide the functionality and build hype until they can build their own version into the OS by default. Docker on Windows becomes obsolete, and everyone runs apps on Azure.

indraxon Copies of malware used by intelligence agencies to spy on journalists

If I were the company writing this, I'd include a remote uninstall command that left as few traces as possible, and encourage its use. It lowers the probability of discovery.

Since law enforcement typically wants convictions, it could be a selling point to prompt for uninstall when a warrant expires.

indraxon US Sought Permission to Change Historical Record of a Public Court Proceeding

The fact that they said this, without pointing out that it was unknowable, makes me wonder if they know of another request that they can't talk about.

indraxon Stingray, the fake cell phone tower

Then they are sending signals to my computer system (phone) in order to gain access to information without authorization.

Do you think you are free to do that?

indraxon Two Girls, a Golden Balloon, and Fate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littlewood%27s_law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

indraxon Clever Oculus Project Lets You Live Your Life In Third Person

>If we may suggest a next version of the project: have a drone follow you automatically, blasting its camera feed to the Rift wirelessly.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sqdr/hexo-your-autonomo...