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alvarosm

250 karma · joined January 30, 2011

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alvarosm··on Attacking discrimination with smarter machine learning
Any SJW care to explain why I'm wrong instead of downvoting? thanks! this is a lot of fun :D
alvarosm··on Attacking discrimination with smarter machine learning
No, no, he's advocating for a dreadful, sinister world where a bunch of high priests strip you of your freedom to decide how you conduct business...

How much "discrimination" will be good enough in the end? I'll tell you what the endgame is: no discrimination at all, everybody gets a loan. So, in other words, no loans at all because nobody would conduct business in those conditions.

alvarosm··on Attacking discrimination with smarter machine learning
This is how it should be: "Max Profit. The most profitable, since there are no constraints. But the two groups have different thresholds, meaning they are held to different standards."

Here's the big fallacy: "the two groups have different thresholds, meaning they are held to different standards." They are not held to different standards because they're different groups, but because of other reasons that indicate different loan default rates. So you cannot call this "discrimination". This is how things should be.

alvarosm··on Attacking discrimination with smarter machine learning
yeah this is all pretty ridiculous. Only they can talk about discriminating and say they're talking about "equality". It takes some serious twisting!
alvarosm··on Keybase chooses Zcash
Of course I did.
alvarosm··on Keybase chooses Zcash
ripping off the greedy fanboys is way cheaper and quicker
alvarosm··on Keybase chooses Zcash
Look around this thread's comments, they're all taken in
alvarosm··on Keybase chooses Zcash
At least I hope he got paid well for that idiotic tale...
alvarosm··on Keybase chooses Zcash
You need a ton of space and/or processing power for the zero-knowledge transactions. The anonymity isn't free!

In practice Zcash/zcoin (different tradeoffs) are of no use to you unless you are willing to go the extra mile to hide something (criminal activities and such). There's no point in paying for the extra effort for normal transactions.

alvarosm··on Diamonds Suck (2006)
Yeah, quite fishy. He even goes on to say Retail ~$735, Moissanite.net $399. That article is practically an ad.
alvarosm··on [dead]
Satoshi's paper is very concise and the best introduction to Bitcoin (or the damn "blockchain technology" bullshit used to raise money for ridiculous startups, if you want to call it that), particularly for the technical audience here on HN. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
alvarosm··on Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick
yeah I have two good words: mental illness. the guy is nuts
alvarosm··on Microsoft Cognitive Services
Yeah, the main reason, assuming you're a "ML-based business", is you want to validate your market and not spend a ton of money creating something that's not profitable.

Anyway, there are many more obvious use cases. Other apps/games/services that need to detect faces or filter out porn and so on. Imagine a dating site that estimates age and more based on photos, while also filtering out NSFW images.

alvarosm··on Microsoft Cognitive Services
Pre-processing and alignment are going to be way off. Even if it wasn't, then you have (for face recognition itself) eigenfaces or fisherfaces (bad) or maybe LBP(maybe barely acceptable). Your performance is going to be abysmal compared to serious face recognition technology.
alvarosm··on Spanish Boy Racks Up €100K Bill, Google Cancels The Charge
They should have charged the idiot parents who gave him access to their bank account. But they did not only in order to save face and not be portrayed as an evil corporation by the media.

There are no mistakes here. The idiot kid wanted publicity at any cost, the idiot parents want to give the kid everything he wants and Google doesn't want any more hostile propaganda in Europe.

alvarosm··on Spanish Boy Racks Up €100K Bill, Google Cancels The Charge
3. Use the press to make Google look evil.

Fixed that for you ;)

alvarosm··on Project Cybersyn: Socialism Through Cybernetics
Right. I guessed and I guessed wrong. I've seen them do it so many times that I jumped the gun.
alvarosm··on Project Cybersyn: Socialism Through Cybernetics
The BBC will distort anything to prove their point: that socialism is great.
alvarosm··on Project Cybersyn: Socialism Through Cybernetics
The EU is tanking thanks to socialism. Norway has oil to fund its pseudo-socialism. China is doing "well" since it ditched socialism.
alvarosm··on Why are Adults so busy?
You can't focus on a task probably because they're all rubbish. The movie you're watching is rubbish, the website on your chrome only mildly interesting and HN the usual predictable progressive groupthink. They're all mildly entertaining: not anywhere near interesting. Find something more interesting and it will keep you hooked. Book suggestion btw, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_Tailor_Soldier_Spy
alvarosm··on How to Have Healthy Relationships as a Developer
sure
alvarosm··on Most olive oils sold in the United States are adulterated or deceptively labeled
I'm not thinking of corporations. Local govt, etc. The study was made by -surprise- a university in the state where olive oil is produced. Btw about ads there's nothing more effective than a journalist that does it for free. There's another thread now in HN about marijuana's awesomeness. Don't people think for themselves anymore? do you all take a package of propaganda and ideology and blissfully swallow it without thinking twice?
alvarosm··on Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin
This is like lsd in the 60s... Hopefully in a couple of decades we'll realize marijuana is shit.
alvarosm··on Most olive oils sold in the United States are adulterated or deceptively labeled
They don't name names because it's probably scaremongering propaganda. Somebody wants to boost local oil consumption or other oils (other than olive) or something
alvarosm··on How to Have Healthy Relationships as a Developer
making assumptions is racist. and sexist. and very much not PC. shame on you!
alvarosm··on How to Have Healthy Relationships as a Developer
Well if you really must not talk about it because you're in a stressful situation... but it's not ideal.
alvarosm··on How to Have Healthy Relationships as a Developer
It's not about what you want it's about what others may like to hear from you. And if you're doing something all day long and you can't talk about it, what do you talk about? you'll be like a foreign object to others
alvarosm··on China, Not Silicon Valley, Is Cutting Edge in Mobile Tech
the censorship brigade killed this post from someone else so, reposting (he's mostly right):

Ugh, this US/China dichotomy makes for good headlines but I hope the good people of the actual tech industry are able to see beyond it. The supporting examples are ripe with confirmation bias: - Yes, MoMo is older than Tinder but Badoo is older than MoMo - Drones took off worldwide - "walkie-talkie" = sending audio messages are you kidding me - QR codes were tried and not adopted by consumers in EU a century ago (recall the Economist being all up in arms about how they were going to revolutionize everything back in 08), no wonder companies were reluctant to bring them back

Yes, Messenger surely wants to become wx but with a user base that's infinitely more fragmented -- it's going to take infinitely longer to launch a global payments solution that partners with all banks everywhere and obeys all regulations.

You know why apps start in wx? Because there is no single app store.

Yes -- China has some awesome mobile stuff going on, but this whole "TIL Chinese people also use the internet and it has other stuff???" fascination is just sad.

alvarosm··on Germany offers up to €30k for 6 months of working on OSS
One of the virtues of OSS :)
alvarosm··on My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land
No. Some of us would contend that the basic tenets of socialism cause a society to degenerate in the same way. Communism brings it on brutally, all of a sudden.

Besides, Venezuela considers itself socialist. "21st century socialism", they proudly named it.

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