freyir

He was caught using two fake reactions, and he owned up to those. But we can’t say if the others are real or not with any certainty. Personally, I thought the parking garage reaction looked like bad acting as soon as I saw it, so I’m still skeptical.

He also initially claimed the package was placed in Illinois, but he edited the video after people called him out on it.

And he presents the device as something he engineered himself, only briefly mentioning that someone helped him. Another video shows that the other guy, Sean Hodgins, actually built it (find the link in jtokoph's comment below).

So who really knows? It wouldn’t be the first time something on the Internet was staged.

“Pub talk” is a thing, and “can’t discern from overengineered pub talk” makes sense.

“Can’t discern from overengineered public talk” is plausible, but it would be very unusual to phrase it that way.

It’s not really clear that he meant "public."

Well, he didn’t even do the engineering so... it’s just entertainment.

Any idea why they developed Flashlight for this, instead of using PyTorch?

That might be credited more to his role in creating Swift than his expertise in ML.

To be clear, I'm not claiming he's not capable of the role at some point. I don't know one way or the other. But his transition from compilers to AI seems fairly recent.

I haven't been to Whole Foods much in the last few years, but their produce used to be at least as good as other supermarkets, and usually better. What are you comparing it to? Have you noticed the quality go down over time, or have you always had issues with the produce? I agree though, their prices aren't great, and their store brand/off-brand items are often sub par.

His experience seems to be entirely focused on compilers. He's a talented engineer and leader, and his decision to join Google Brain indicates interest in AI, but wouldn't the chief AI/ML engineer have some demonstrable expertise in that particular field?

Don't forget the occasional haboob.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYnuzoH5oBA

I doubt our technology is ready for that.

They're really on another level.

Damnit, America!

> Damnit, America.

Hey now, they're based in Bratislava.

> It does not seem impossible to imagine a function that spawns code close to data

The authors discuss this:

To achieve good performance, the infrastructure should be able and willing to physically colocate certain code and data. This is often best achieved by shipping code to data, rather than the current FaaS approach of pulling data to code. At the same time, elasticity requires that code and data be logically separated, to allow infrastructure to adapt placement: sometimes data needs to be replicated or repartitioned to match code needs. In essence, this is the traditional challenge of data independence, but at extreme and varying scale, with multi-tenanted usage and fine-grained adaptivity in time.

Not impossible to imagine, but the challenges are non-trivial.

I chose San Francisco because it's seemed like the place to be, as an engineer in the U.S. But I've found the quality of life very poor compared to the other cities I've lived in, and I'm planning my escape.

Oh, you're right:

When I was preparing an early technology demo of Doom 3 for a keynote in Japan, I was having a hard time dealing with some of the managers involved that were insisting that I change the demo because “Steve doesn’t like blood.” I knew that Doom 3 wasn’t to his taste, but that wasn’t the point of doing the demo.

I brought it to Steve, with all the relevant people on the thread. He replied to everyone with: “I trust you John, do whatever you think is great.”

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2146412825...

The story is that Jobs was put off by Carmack's t-shirt (a smiley face with a bloody bullet hole in it). But they had a discussion, Carmack was critical of some of Apple's technical decisions, and Jobs listened and ultimately took Carmack's side. Jobs then yelled at one of his senior engineers.

https://www.facebook.com/JamesHBlack/posts/10156560054277932

They're not close to profitable. Recent quarterly losses:

    Q1: $601 million net loss
    Q2: $891 million net loss 
    Q3: $1.07 billion net loss

I'm not an accountant, but I'm not sure how this can go well for them.

> Betting most users will continue using the core website?

This is my guess. A desperate attempt to bring back its core users.

Why should anybody be embarrassed about playing with toys or making stamps as a child?

It's the stupid stuff they'll do in high school and college they should be worried about.

Any idea why I can access this extension through Apple's webpage, but not through the App Store? The App Store only shows the non-Origin uBlock.

I’d be sick of all these “deleting Facebook made me happier” posts, except I deleted Facebook and it made me happier, too.

Yeah, and when they say Wi-Fi shouldn't make my brain tingle

I should say, it's presently inferior. It has repeatedly placed behind Stockfish in recent TCEC and CCCC tournaments. I imagine it will surpass Stockfish at some point.

Leela is an inferior chess engine, and Leela and Stockfish were given equal time. In the human match, Carlsen and Caruana are closely matched and Carlsen had a significant clock advantage.

The engines are playing out the position here: https://www.chess.com/computer-chess-championship

It's strategic, it's rational, and still it's disappointing. He was renown for pressing forward against the odds and clinching unexpected victories. Mathias Feist on Carlsen:

"There is an equal position on the board, and the opponent thinks: this is dead drawn. I can play almost anything and there is nothing he can do. But Magnus plays on, seeking complications, setting up threats. He is narrowing the margin required to hold the draw. Soon his opponent is thinking: why is he still playing – I can hold a draw with any of these three moves. Then: I can hold with this move and with this move. And then: I still have one clear way to hold a draw. And under the strain of constantly having to solve deep and complex problems, more often than not the opponent will crack. Magnus wins not because it was in the position, he wins because he is Magnus."

While the primary motivation of companies is to generate profits, Google has been in a unique position, thanks to its near monopoly, to generate profits while sticking to its values. It’s a shame they’ve started down this other path.

> Python formatting is egregious though, with hopelessly long lines

This is the result of writing hopelessly long lines of code. Python doesn't force you to write long lines.

I've done it myself, many times, but gradually made efforts to avoid this. I'll move deeply indented code into a new function or split up a long expression with a temporary variable. If I run into a particularly hard-to-format portion of code, it's usually a sign of that my code could be better.

It feels like HN became Reddit overnight. We had a good run.

It doesn't actually seem very wishy-washy? The article is focused on a single point: standing desks don't provide much health benefit to most people. The conclusion follows: use a standing desk if you like it, not if you've been wrongly convinced that you need it.

What more committed stance would you like the author to take? Since there are limited health benefits, nobody should ever use a standing desk?

The author doesn't make any coherent assertions. He misinterprets some statistics, sets up straw man arguments, and draws invalid conclusions from graphs. What specifically would you like me to address?

The claim here is that opioids are not as bad as you've been led to believe. I'll let the article speak for itself, but note that ACSH has been frequently criticized for taking a pro-industry stance on issues:

* In 1979, the information director of the FDA said, "Whelan just makes blanket endorsements of food additives. Her organization is a sham, an industry front."

* Ralph Nader claimed: "ACSH is a consumer front organization for its business backers. It has seized the language and style of the existing consumer organizations, but its real purpose, you might say, is to glove the hand that feeds it."

* The Center for Science in the Public Interest stated: "ACSH seems to arrive at conclusions before conducting studies. Through voodoo or alchemy, bodies of scientific knowledge are transmogrified into industry-oriented position statements.

They previously sought funding from Philip Morris. Recent donors include Chevron, Coca-Cola, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Bayer Cropscience, Procter & Gamble, Syngenta, 3M, McDonald's and Altria.