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xileron Economic Inequality

There's nothing wrong with someone getting rich provided they contribute a proportional amount of value to society. Problem is that since the post-WII period (also called the Golden Age of Capitalism) such rewards have been happening less and less [1,2]. In fact, I think reducing inequality is essential for promoting productivity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_II_econ...

[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/US_produ...

xileron Microsoft Removes the Option to Opt Out of Windows 10 Free Upgrade?

Despite the totality of his radical opinions, this to me seems like one of RMS's more valid arguments against non-Libre software. Especially when it comes to something fundamental like an OS, being at the mercy of a corporation is highly problematic.

xileron Darpa is testing implanting chips in soldiers’ brains

Make no mistake, this is more than distant science fiction. Similar devices and experiments were made by Yale researcher Jose Delgado back in the 50s and 60s [1]. He also wrote a book with a rather interesting title: 'Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society'.

[1] http://io9.com/5871598/the-scientist-who-controlled-peoples-...

xileron Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy shows a higher-quality internet is possible

Are there any differences between the models of Scholarpedia and SEP?

xileron The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Random Forests

Another one is The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Learning [1] by LeCun.

[1] http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2014/webinar/gtc-expres...

xileron Ask HN: Books with a high signal to noise ratio?

Open books like the Haskell wikibook [1] tend to be concise since there's no need to create filler content.

[1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell

xileron Machine Learning and Human Bias: An Uneasy Pair

Summarizing the complexities of human behavior using models appears as an unpleasant echo from the past. Statistical pioneers Karl Pearson and Francis Galton were strong proponents of social Darwinism aka scientific racism [1, 2].

The biggest problem with an observational approach to aggregate human behavior is that it generally ignores internal structure and makes hasty judgements based on mere appearance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Pearson#Politic

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton#Heredity_and_eu...

xileron Oliver Heaviside Wrote Maxwell’s Equations (2013)

He also managed to recognize a relationship between electromagnetism and gravity before Einstein.

http://serg.fedosin.ru/Heavisid.htm