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provost

606 karma · joined April 23, 2014

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provost··on In Pentagon Contract Fight, Amazon Has Foes in High Places
Well, that's just a clever PR lipservice move. They couldn't win the contract because they didn't have the ability to, so rather than failing embarrassingly, they blamed their exit on their brand-new AI principles to make themselves look good. This was the consensus on HN at the time.
provost··on The Flatness of U.S. States [pdf]
I lived in Florida, and recall hearing that much of the state is actually below sea level. I saw some forests, but much of the state is swamp, or former swamps that were drained for suburbia.
provost··on Oracle Said to Be Leading Anti-Amazon Lobby on Pentagon Cloud Bid
> Kicking the crap out of Google in the courts is the one good thing Oracle is doing.

Could you elaborate on why this is a good thing?

provost··on 85,000-year-old Finger Bone Complicates Understanding of African Migration
Another example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man
provost··on Tom Lee Predicts Cyrptocurrency Market Outflow to Fiat Currency Before Tax Day
Gains are only realized when they sell, so liquidity doesn’t matter if they don’t sell.
provost··on Show HN: AI Grant – Get $2,500 for your AI project in minutes
While smarts are generally useful, is not creativity a stronger influencer in innovation? But I’m not sure what kind of test could measure creativity.
provost··on Analysts argue that over-automation is to blame for Tesla problems
> Hmm, who do I trust, the guy who figured out how to land rockets onto a barge, or some “analyst” ...

This kind of comment is a disservice to all the engineers who actually figured it out. Elon Musk is certainly a visionary and a financier, but is not a 1000x engineer/mathematician who did all the work himself

provost··on NASA reveals delay for Hubble successor
> “Sorry, but..”

So are you refuting that the missions were incremental? Because if you look at the mission outcomes, they certainly were..

provost··on NASA reveals delay for Hubble successor
Yes, it was very incremental. They even sent the orbiter around the moon on a mission before even attempting to land. And there were a number of other tests (manned and unmanned), and even ones without an official Apollo designation.

More info: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo.html

provost··on Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads
As you described, the default is to yield, and so the vehicle can always yield and signal its intention to do so by breaking slowly. And I agree, there may not always be a sign (a storm or driver could knock it over), so the default should always be to yield.
provost··on Fred's ImageMagick Scripts
Yes, it is practically useful advice, especially when you’re on a flight with no WiFi.
provost··on US officials: Kaspersky “Slingshot” report burned anti-terror operation
> McAffee who announced a few years ago that they will happily turn a blind eye on NSA&FBI malware.

Source?

provost··on Linux Raw Sockets
As mentioned.. Libtin’s OpenSSL dependency can be avoided if you can do without WPA2 support. Not sure about libpcap though
provost··on Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising
With the ICO/coin ads promising 49,000% returns that I see here in the UK, I’m glad that they’re putting the brakes on it.
provost··on World’s Central Bank: Crypto Could Risk Bank Runs
I agree, and I’m flagging this post as this user has spammed the same website repeatedly all day.
provost··on Palantir Wins $876M U.S. Army Contract
This is disgusting.
provost··on GitHub is forcing me to change my username, and will not tell me why
What a great list! I’d recommend adding “secure” too.
provost··on Amazon Partnership with British Police Alarms Privacy Advocates
The iPhone already does safety, weather, and police notifications by default, and you have to opt-out. This is essentially the same thing, but users have to opt-in.
provost··on The Next Generation of Distributed and Autonomous Files
Meta: Alex, why are you linking to your own twitter and not the medium directly?
provost··on Amazon will stop selling Nest smart home devices, escalating its war with Google
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16506979
provost··on Ask HN: What's a good static site generator to use for a blog in 2018?
What’s your recommended method to make WP static? Have any of the other plugins broken for you from making WP static?
provost··on Eldar Black Holes
It was interesting to watch, but the presenter presents everything as truth, but aren’t many of his explanations still theories? I’d like to see what other competing theories there are..
provost··on Founder lived in a nursing home for 3 months to get his start-up off the ground
> sounds like he could have used amazon turk.

Could you clarify how mechanical turk could have helped?

provost··on Amazon Wants to Extend Its Dominance in Audiobooks
I bought a couple 27-40 hour audiobooks, so I just put my audible subscription on hold while I caught up. Switching between kindle & audio can definitely speed things up
provost··on Waymo Launches Its Self-Driving Armada
> The details are a bit sketchy. Ask "how many thousands," and you're told, ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

Off-topic: I was surprised to see that journalists are doing Unicode art in articles now, and I don’t think that’s wise. Wouldn’t this confuse a blind reader who is listening to a transcribed version?

provost··on Inside Uber’s $100,000 Payment to a Hacker, and the Fallout
Dupe. Comments here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16137727
provost··on Exercise Alters Our Microbiome
Thanks!
provost··on Google Pay
Also, they have had Hangouts, Messenger, Talk, Voice, Allo, and Duo... most with the same functionality. What is up with Google's product management? Is there a strategy?
provost··on Exercise Alters Our Microbiome
Has anyone done research on the probiotic industry? Are there brands that are considered safer, better, than the rest?

I was reading about the vitamin pill industry, and that made me stare questionably at the probiotic bottle my wife buys -- where does it come from and is it safe? Two questions I have no answers for.

provost··on Exercise Alters Our Microbiome
I 'CTRL+F' for coffee, but only see it mentioned in your comment. Where else was it mentioned?
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