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boltzmannbrainon Israel airport security stole my laptop

Agreed. Lesson learned.

As recommended elsewhere in these comments, I'll likely use Chromebook + https://www.paperspace.com/ in the future, and implement a travel policy for my team regarding what material can be taken where.

boltzmannbrainon Israel airport security stole my laptop

> They're looking for responses that appear delayed, evasive, made up

Exactly. AFIK I responded normally.

Not to mention someone actually doing something malicious with their computer probably wouldn't tell security they're a SW eng.

boltzmannbrainon Israel airport security stole my laptop

Thank you. It was an unfortunate learning lesson. Even if I do get my laptop back it won't be usable -- I have to assume they've gone through it and tampered somehow.

boltzmannbrainon Israel airport security stole my laptop

Wow they asked you to login? I have the Apple watch feature for auto-login, but took my watch off as soon as they grabbed my laptop.

Yes I went through several tiers of security as well, each with different organizations it seemed (airport, private, gov't).

boltzmannbrainon Israel airport security stole my laptop

Taxi. I've traveled to Israel a few times now and the extra questioning seems standard.

boltzmannbrainon Israel airport security stole my laptop

It was more of the rapid-fire "where did you stay? what did you do your previous trips to Israel?", but also asking where I got the computer from, what I use it for, why I brought it to Israel, if anyone else touched it, etc.

boltzmannbrainon Israel airport security stole my laptop

Never got my laptop back.

boltzmannbrainon Israel airport security stole my laptop

Yes this could have been worse, and is relatively minor compared to other mideast travel horror stories. Nonetheless I feel frustrated not only losing my computer and non-backed up materials, but because this occurs as I am helping an Israeli tech company by sharing my knowledge and expertise. There has been incredible outreach initiative in the AI research community as of late -- e.g., DL Indaba in Africa -- but this makes us feel unwanted. I will continue working with the Israeli startup, but from my office in SF.

boltzmannbrainon Israel airport security stole my laptop

Curbside security guard asked a couple basic questions ("How long were you in Israel? Where are you traveling to?"). The guard at the first security gate inside asked ~20 questions (4-8 is normal). I think answering that I'm a SW engineer to "What do you do for a living?" made her suspicious. I was then directed to a side security area where they searched my bags and discovered my laptop. A few guards then escorted me to a side room. Here there was one guard interrogating me on and off for ~2 hours. Just about any question I asked was met with "We can't tell you that." They confiscated my laptop b/c they had to "run more tests". I said several times I would wait for the tests, but they 'insisted' I leave. As soon as I was through security I went to Turkish airlines for help, but their immediate (read: scripted) response was "We do not deal with airport security."

boltzmannbrainon SF restaurants are suffocating

> the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment at an insane $3,447, according to a 2018 rent report by Adobo. The U.S. Census revealed in March, the median rent in San Francisco in 2016 was roughly over $1,600/month. These numbers are worrisome in a few ways: 1. The egregious rent amount that is required for somebody to live in the city today. 2. The jump in median rent in a mere two years. 3. The $1,600 median rent from 2016 also included rent-controlled apartments which indicates their rapid disappearance.

median != average

Fun example: In 1987 the average starting salary of University of North Carolina geography graduates was over $100,000. In 1986 Michael Jordan graduated.

boltzmannbrainon Ask HN: Launching a US startup in China

Also interested in the same info on Japan, thanks!

boltzmannbrainon Show HN: Matrixprofile-ts – A Python library for timeseries motifs and discords

Interested folks may also want to check out the Python library nupic for streaming time-series analytics [1] and anomaly detection [2].

[1] https://github.com/numenta/nupic

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092523121...

boltzmannbrainon Ask HN: Engineers from non-CS background, how did you pivot into ML/AI?

> study textbooks. Do exercises. Treat it like academic studying

This. Highly recommend Russel & Norvig [1] for high-level intuition and motivation. Then Bishop's "Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning" [2] and Koller's PGM book [3] for the fundamentals.

Avoid MOOCs, but there are useful lecture videos, e.g. Hugo Larochelle on belief propagation [4].

FWIW this is coming from a mechanical engineer by training, but self-taught programmer and AI researcher. I've been working in industry as an AI research engineer for ~6 years.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approa...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-Learning-Informat...

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Probabilistic-Graphical-Models-Princi...

[4] https://youtu.be/-z5lKPHcumo

boltzmannbrainon Brain.js

> if you are serious about getting into data science or AI

Then you won't be using Javascript anyways. Like you said, Python is the way to go: PyTorch, TF, PyMC3, scikit-learn, etc.

boltzmannbrainon Brain.js

y tho? https://js.tensorflow.org/

boltzmannbrainon Ask HN: How are the graphics on this page created?

Haha cool http://www.piotrantkowiak.com/16-personalities-famous-people

boltzmannbrainon “How the Brain Is Inspiring AI” from Forbes 30 Under 30 Event

Event page with speaker (Alexander Lavin) bio: https://www.forbes.com/forbes-live/event/a-i-machine-learnin...

boltzmannbrainon Depression, Self-Identity and Reality: Living in a Story Created by Facebook

I'm happier and healthier that these conversations are happening; I'm not alone.

Facebook is clearly problematic, and I've been suspicious of the negative effects of Instagram and Hinge (dating app). The former would make me jealous/depressed/frustrated as I compare myself to glimpses of my peers supposedly winning at life. The latter would make me less outgoing in real life, b/c somehow flipping through dating profiles satisfied an underlying desire to meet new people.

I highly recommend Johann Hari's work: "Lost Connections" book [1], Sam Harris and Ezra Klein podcast episodes [2, 3], TED talk [4].

[1] https://thelostconnections.com/

[2] https://samharris.org/podcasts/142-addiction-depression-mean...

[3] https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/the-ezra-klein-show/e/5...

[4] https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_y...

boltzmannbrainon Guide to scaling engineering organizations

Re "Don’t mistake productivity for engagement": The story is quite similar to my recent departure from a robotics startup. Even though the company had the suggested survey system in place, management made me feel like an engineering resource to be allocated rather than a person with career ambitions. The survey was one of several facades the CEO had in place.

boltzmannbrainon Ask HN: Is neuroscience-inspired machine learning the next big thing?

Great ICML presentations by,

Tenenbaum: https://youtu.be/RB78vRUO6X8

Richards: https://youtu.be/C_2Q7uKtgNs

boltzmannbrainon Ask HN: Is neuroscience-inspired machine learning the next big thing?

There was a rather interesting talk at the Forbes Under 30 summit last month on this, "How The Brain is Inspiring AI" [1], but I cannot find the video. Lavin argued neuro and cognitive science -inspiration, not derivation, is useful at varying levels of abstraction, i.e. Marr's levels [2]. He showcased three works at the respective levels: Tenenbaum et al at MIT [3], some Vicarious research [4], and Blake Richards' work towards "DL with segregated dendrites" [5].

[1] https://www.forbes.com/forbes-live/event/a-i-machine-learnin...

[2] http://blog.shakirm.com/2013/04/marrs-levels-of-analysis/

[3] https://cbmm.mit.edu/about/people/tenenbaum

[4] https://www.vicarious.com/2017/10/26/common-sense-cortex-and...

[5] https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.00161

boltzmannbrainon An Israeli spacecraft is gearing up for a 2019 Moon mission

Love to see the XPrize teams pushing on; also Astrobotic [1] and Moon Express [2].

[1] https://www.astrobotic.com/

[2] http://www.moonexpress.com/

boltzmannbrainon Ask HN: How to develop a HIPAA compliant app?

Thanks I'll definitely look into these! In your research and trialing did you compare TrueVault (mentioned in other comments). Digging around today I'm rather impressed, but haven't tried anything yet.

And if you don't mind, what do you consider a "sane price point"? I'm assuming that price is relatively small compared to the actual AWS hosting fees you pay on top of the PaaS, no?

boltzmannbrainon Ask HN: How to develop a HIPAA compliant app?

Thanks for the TrueVault pointer, that's a great resource for info! I was going to followup asking your thoughts on using their service vs doing it yourself, but reading the dev guide posted by @jameslk I came across this:

    We think this comment from Hacker News sums up the technical debt required to roll your own HIPAA compliant infrastructure quite accurately. This was completely unsolicited and is not from a TrueVault customer.
    
        "[Building our own HIPAA compliant infrastructure] took upwards of 1,000 person-hours to figure out HIPAA-compliance issues. This will continue to be an ongoing cost for us, because HIPAA is an ongoing law and it changes sometimes. It takes substantial auditing time and money." — jph

boltzmannbrainon Using Dark Mode in CSS with MacOS Mojave

Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/macos-mojave-dark-...

boltzmannbrainon Anki Vector: The Home Robot

"Smart enough to take over the world. Nice enough not to."

<rolls eyes>... So how smart?

"Weather, timer, take a photo, blackjack."

Ha, must be $5. Or $10, it's kinda cute.

"$249.99"

Piss off.

"Super smart AI, safely programmed one notch below too smart."

Yeah, if it could keep a calendar, man that'd be dangerous.

boltzmannbrainon Ask HN: Best books on the psychology of religion?

"Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion" by Sam Harris: http://a.co/d/bpQ6OlS

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins: http://a.co/d/2aP5Tvo

"Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment" by Robert Wright: http://a.co/d/8IawuEo

Sam Harris discusses these topics (amongst others you may find interesting) in conversations on his podcast: https://samharris.org/podcast/

boltzmannbrainon Computer Vision Using Go and OpenCV 3

The post links to open source robotics projects Gobot.io and Gocv.io, which make me wonder...

a. Why use Go for robotics? What pros/cons are there compared to Python and C++?

b. Is Gobot intended to compete with ROS?

boltzmannbrainon Dietary carbohydrate intake and mortality: a prospective cohort study

+1. Keto is vastly lower, typically 5%. Someone eating a 37% carb diet will receive none of the health benefits that spending substantial periods in ketosis can bring, e.g. lowering cholesterol.