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hebdoon Announcing TensorFlow 0.8 – now with distributed computing support

I doubt it is a priority. But I can certainly recommend Amazon GPU-enabled instances (~0.6$/hour/GPU, not that much actually).

hebdoon Millionaire migration in 2015 [pdf]

I've been seriously contemplating it for about a year now: is it the time to abandon Europe and find new life elsewhere? Asking for the honest HN opinion, is the old continent already the sinking ship? On one hand it is comforting to consider that there is ~1000 years of history of civilized Europe behind us, with rich culture, the discovery and development of science and, in general, prosperity. On the other, it took less than a century for the Western Roman Empire to collapse.

hebdoon Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?

Varnish cache.

1) Configured via a special DSL (Varnish Configuration language) that gets translated into C, compiled and loaded into the Varnish process via a .so. Perfect combination of expressiveness and speed. You can even inline raw C code in it!

2) Heavy, good use of virtual memory. Varnish allocates quite a lot of gigabytes and leaves it up to the operating system to decide what should be in RAM and what should be on disk.

3) LRU garbage collection of cached objects requires a synchronized priority queue. Varnish people transformed the decades old idea of implementing a heap in an array that every CS graduate knows and came up with a faster, paging-aware solution (http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1814327).

hebdoon How to Fix Tech’s H-1B Problem

Didn't know that, thanks for the information. I was rejected in the H1B random lottery step (sigh) after getting an offer from a grown startup in SF, and did not investigate the green card process deep enough.

hebdoon How to Fix Tech’s H-1B Problem

You can change jobs while being on an H1B. It is commonly referred to as H1B transfer.

hebdoon How to Fix Tech’s H-1B Problem

I'm quite sure that by writing "I'm not in the slow lane" he/she meant exactly that he/she is not from India or China.

hebdoon Investigation: Police Shootings

Sorry for the choice of words, but my point was that a person armed with just a knife can still be very dangerous. The use of a gun in such a situation cannot be simply called a deadly overreaction, without going into details. Therefore I do not see my comment as unreasonable.

hebdoon Investigation: Police Shootings

If you think that a knife threat should never call for a firearm response then I recommend this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xpcrDzy344

hebdoon The strange non-transitivity of random variables (2014)

While Kolmogorov's definition of probability looks a bit spooky at first, I definitely recommend going through it at some point. Not only it feels nice, it also makes understanding probabilistic concepts easier (e.g. understanding that a statistical space is simply a "lifted", or rather parametrized, version of a probabilistic space).

hebdoon Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

Not for the first time, and perhaps not for the last time, these words are so relevant.

A war that need not have been fought was about to be

fought because of mutual misunderstanding, language

difficulties, and mistranslations.

Why did America drop the two bombs? Why did it not drop the first one over the Tokyo bay? Why Japanese leaders hesitated so much to surrender, despite being so much overwhelmed by foreign power? Why nobody managed to stop Hitler from inside Germany? Why all the genocides in the history had to happen?

The world is complicated, it does not always choose the right path. Decisions of even the greatest importance are sometimes made with insufficient information, and are subject to all kinds of cognitive failures. It's easy to judge after you know all the facts.

hebdoon China stocks hit hard, rest of world shrugs

Calling a 5% change in the Shanghai Composite index a "hard hit" is an overstatement, given what has been happening there over the last months (particularly April-September).

hebdoon Gaming the H-1B system for good

I've applied for H1B in the past, knowing everything one should know about it beforehand. Either my choice was idiotic, or being a slave in the US is better than being free in my home country (Poland). </irony>

While I agree that H1B is a stupid system, for everybody, I also think you should be more careful with your choice of words. Saying H1B is slavery is like comparing US police brutality cases to Nazism.

hebdoon Jessica Livingston

I suggest you read the essay again. PG clearly writes that Jessica's way of dealing with people is by listening. And she's damn good at that. It is harder to listen when you speak, or when everybody watches your every move.

hebdoon Jessica Livingston

There is no special key, no special pattern that unlocks one's extraordinary performance in a given area. Some people happen to have the right combination of brains, experience, commitment, and luck. And they leave the world impressed.

You could literally ask the same questions about Mozart or Einstein. Let me try that: what's their secret? Can you learn it? Is it experience, something you either have or have not? Are men better suited for the job? What clues are you looking for while analyzing a theory? Is there something like a 'perfect' symphony, or did he make a list of positive and negative tone patterns? Are some chords more important than others?

hebdoon Don't copy paste from a website to a terminal

Do not cat log files either: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/15101/how-to-avoid-e...

hebdoon The Impossible Music of Black MIDI

Random noise cannot be (on average) loselessly compressed, not even by 0.0000001% of the original size. To see that it is the case it is sufficient to notice that a compression algorithm is essentially a way to reorder all possible inputs, all at once, and then apply the pigeonhole principle. Kind of similar to the proof that if a loseless compression algorithm shortens at least one input, it must also extend at least one.

Claiming that there exists an algorithm that loselessly compresses random noise to 86% of the original size is just wrong.

hebdoon The Confessions of @dick_nixon

Well, what he said is: 1) he does not like pro-marijuana lobbyists/activists ("bastards" as he calls them), 2) all of the pro-lobbyists (from his times) are Jewish, 3) he does not know why is there such a connection, 4) he provides a crappy explanation (psychiatrists? really?). Now I have no idea whether or not 2) is true (probably not), but correlations between ethnicity and lifestyle preferences can and do exist. Take Chinese approach to parenting - clearly different.

To sum up, the only thing that could possibly be offensive is either 2) or the overall tone of the fragment. Hence my question: is it because it's plain false? Or is it because such language is always xenophobic, regardless of available evidence?

hebdoon The Confessions of @dick_nixon

Serious question, however stupid, ignorant or offensive it might sound: why is the following anti-semitic? Because it was false in Nixon's times? I'm not that familiar with the history of the United States in the 70s.

You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana are Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists.

hebdoon Hitler's Drug Addiction

Yes, that's correct. Only codeine can be considered a preform (of morphine), because it is metabolized in human livers into morphine. Having said that it's worth to remember that opiates are really very similar one to each other.

hebdoon Hitler's Drug Addiction

The fact that Hitler was a serious addict is true. He was also bipolar, and it is quite likely that the combination has contributed a lot to the beginning of the end of Operation Barbarossa in 1943 (through his faulty decision about not attacking Moscow in 1941, before winter, and before Stalin realized what is really happening). The thing to remember is that amphetamines were way more acceptable in the early 1940s (because the bad side effects were not yet that obvious), for example Wehrmacht soldiers had "superpower chocolate bars" beefed up with amphetamine. They were allowed to consume it in a dire situation. There is a lot of unnecessary buzzing happening in the article though.

hebdoon Hitler's Drug Addiction

JFK had Addison's disease. He had to take certain "drugs", such as testosterone, for actual medical reasons. Not that I negate his usage of less medicine-approved compounds.

hebdoon Dear Volkswagen: you are probably doomed (but not because of diesel)

By saying CDOs I meant their ratings. And while, as always, nothing can be proven on Wall Street, you won't tell me that giving mortgages to unemployed people and then selling it as CDOs (or even CDOs squared!) is good.

hebdoon Dear Volkswagen: you are probably doomed (but not because of diesel)

You overestimate the damage. First, it only affects diesel engines.

Second, I'm not sure that 25% of the sticker price is an adequate compensation. After all what needs to be done is these cars need to be permanently reprogrammed, and as you say it means power reduction and worse fuel economy. But by how much? It has been a few years now that we (as customers) have to deal with the common industry practice of advertising unrealistic fuel consumption statistics, so I'd say to some extent more car-makers are similarly boned here.

Third, Volkswagen is a group, and owns quite a lot of brands: Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, SEAT, Škoda, Volkswagen, Ducati, MAN, Scania, Neoplan and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles.

Fourth, it is common that such investigations go on for years without end. Microsoft f.eg. did not pay a single penny for the IE antitrust case.

hebdoon Dear Volkswagen: you are probably doomed (but not because of diesel)

2008 financial crisis - collateralized debt obligations. Incomparably bigger.

hebdoon Dear Volkswagen: you are probably doomed (but not because of diesel)

Volkswagen will certainly take a hit, but it is not going to collapse - the German government will bail it any time it's necessary. An ordinary German loves and cares about the national car-making industry, and quite rightfully so.

hebdoon A Decade at Google

Obviously not, except for debugging. Scoring logic is most likely where the "secret sauce" of the thing they did is hidden.

hebdoon Polygon goes to Poland (2014)

A really well done take on the country's history, though in a completely different tone: http://warsawrising.eu/

hebdoon A Simple Proof That Pi Is Irrational

I fail to see how this helps. Actual proof is more complicated, it is based on continued fractions.

hebdoon A Simple Proof That Pi Is Irrational

> Of course, the proof for (tan(x) is irrational for rational x != 0) might be complicated

It is: http://www.pi314.net/eng/lambert.php

hebdoon A Simple Proof That Pi Is Irrational

Neat! I remember that presenting (from memory) a slightly longer proof that pi is irrational was the final question on my Analysis oral exam.

It is surprising how many people know that pi is not rational, yet how non obvious is the proof. Like the first one ever presented. This one is also a nice piece of cake, pulls this polynomial f(x) from a hat.