JamilD

The way they phrase it is suspect though. It's not "the system deployed in a test environment", it's "a simulated system built ... to resemble fleet systems""

That's what I was thinking too. Looking back at Apollo, it seems like they were far more willing to tolerate a higher % risk. What changed? The lack of competition with the USSR? A general shift in our culture?

Even taking into consideration cost of labour, it seems like US manufacturing and infrastructure costs are excessively bloated. Is there any way to reduce it while still maintaining an acceptable level of risk?

I've been wondering this too. Many people I know are avoiding the YC/startup scene because it seems to be for the "cool" kids who know how to talk their way through something, and not those who are actually technically competent.

In aviation, feet are exclusively used, except in Russia and China.

Which is an unfair comparison to make in the first place. Waterloo is an hour and a half away from downtown Toronto -- further than SJ from SF.

I'm exaggerating of course. Born and raised in Toronto.

It's more an inconvenience, not wanting to spend much time outside in the winter. I think everybody generally goes out less in the winter months -- it's a problem you don't generally have even in marginally warmer climates south of the border (or in, say, Vancouver)

I've lived and worked in both Toronto and Silicon Valley, and it's not even close. SV has a way better quality of life than Toronto, even for the marginally higher rent. I paid $2600 for a two bedroom in San Jose -- split that with another person and it's only $1300. I'd be paying more for a studio in downtown Toronto anyway.

And you can't just look at it from the perspective of money. I need to be in a city with things to do, preferably one that isn't practically uninhabitable 6 months of the year. You couldn't pay me to live in Kitchener-Waterloo.

You can trivially modify their example to be 1.02003000400005... cycling through the digits and the argument still holds.

As another commenter pointed out, pi is not proven to be normal, but is suspected to be.

Seconded. It's one of the few good 'classic' AI courses with videos available to the public, though personally I prefer Patrick Winston's 6.034.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP63gFHB6xb-k...

I have a hard time believing that a chess computer wouldn't draw this game… the main issue is in the centipawn evaluation function which would show black ahead. This doesn't seem like a difficult thing to correct, and it might not even be a bad idea to have an evaluation function show black ahead in that position.

Practically, this isn't really an issue. In fact, running the position through the GarboChess JS engine (http://analysis.cpuchess.com), playing as white, it just moves the king around — exactly what a human would do to draw the game.

The GO Train is probably my favorite commuter rail service. People line up properly at the doors, it's never too crowded, it's clean, there aren't delays very often, and it's generally civilized.

"A lot of power"

2/50 senators = 4%

55/538 electoral votes = 10.2%

Compared to:

Population = 13% of US

GDP = 15% of US

Many workers in the Central Valley do commute to the Bay Area or LA.

http://kvpr.org/post/two-hour-daily-commute-thousands-valley...

Exactly -- the HSR Authority is investing heavily in upgrades to Caltrain and Metrolink; they provide tangible benefits to commuters in the cities while building the infrastructure they need to run the high-speed trains in the cities. They can't get the high-speed trains running between SF and SJ until electrification and upgrades to the corridor are finished.

And at the same time, they're doing construction in the Central Valley, which is cheaper and easier on a per-mile basis. Just wish they could find a way to do it faster though; 7 years for SJ-Bakersfield seems like an unreasonably long time.

Support for amnesty and lighter policies against undocumented immigrants comes from both sides of the aisle in CA -- a significant portion of California's economy comes from agriculture in the Central Valley, and almost 100% of the workers there are undocumented. They're a huge net contributor to California's economy.

http://nytimes.com/2017/02/09/us/california-farmers-backed-t...

That's true, it's really helped with the fundamentals - but most of my domain-specific knowledge comes from self-study.

The bigger accusation the article makes is that Levandowski made a deal with Uber to create a startup with Waymo's stolen data, that would later be acquired by Uber.

So Otto was essentially just a vessel for that stolen data, created simply to transfer the IP to Uber. If true, that'd be much bigger and much more damaging than just stealing some files.

I'm so glad that something like "one course at a time" exists. I've been thinking about this a lot recently -- I start a semester excited and eager to learn, but end it off just knowing the basics at a mediocre level, just enough to do well on the exams for all five courses. It's impossible to get any sort of depth of understanding on five topics during three months. It's optimizing for a 4.0 GPA rather than maximum understanding.

You can choose to regulate speech on your own property or site (just like HN does).

You cannot vandalize someone else's property and infringe on their rights because you don't like what they say.

There's no equivalence between the two.

It's also worth noting - for those that will inevitably use this to defend driving - that the environmental effects of cars extend way past dioxide emissions.

It'll also be nice if we see neighborhoods that pop up similar to what's on the Caltrain corridor, like in Burlingame or Mountain View. Really nice, walkable areas with lots of retail and housing.

In Santa Clara County they have a pretty strong vision for more transit-oriented development, for the Milpitas and Berryessa Stations [0]. We'll see if that actually happens though, it seems like a lot of those East Bay stations are just meant to be driven to.

[0] http://www.vta.org/News-and-Media/Connect-with-VTA/Milpitas-...

The BART union contract only allows employees to bid on station postings twice a year.

The VTA is undergoing a complete overhaul of their bus schedules [0], in anticipation of the Milpitas and Berryessa BART station openings, which will happen later this year. After that, there'll be express buses from both stations to Downtown San Jose, and, of course, existing connections to light rail.

[0] http://nextnetwork.vta.org

It really depends on what you want, though. I'd rather be in a coliving space in San Francisco than in a big house in suburbia outside the Bay Area. As people's priorities and expected standards of living change, so does the market rate for different properties. And it seems like my generation is willing to sacrifice space for being in a large city.

Many tech employees come from Iran; it's a country of engineers and mathematicians. Both my supervising postdocs in my research positions were born there.

I've travelled to the US 20+ times over the past two years; I really don't mind going through TSA or US Customs, I have an Arabic first name and I'm a visible minority (Indian). Never had any major issues at the border or during security.

That being said, I cancelled a couple planned trips since January — not going to travel to the US until I have to; I don't want to put up with the hassle.

Another commenter mentioned that much of the code was taken from a tutorial [0], so it might be worth checking that out :) It goes step by step with commented code and explanations.

[0] https://pythonspot.com/personal-assistant-jarvis-in-python/

It's interesting that this got so many upvotes so quickly, despite it being something similar to what (I'm sure) most of us wrote when we first started learning about computers and programming.

Maybe there's just a demand for a true, text-input, multi-purpose natural language personal assistant on the desktop.