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karmacondon commented on If Mark Zuckerberg runs for president, will Facebook help him win?   theguardian.com/commentis... · Posted by u/humility
hellofunk · 8 years ago
The ol' Zuck means well and I think he'd give the go a nice solid try with proper intentions. But I do not think he would be that successful in the office, whatever "successful" means these days.
karmacondon · 8 years ago
Why not? Zuckerberg is clearly a smart man, and he seems to be as qualified as any one else. Infinitely more qualified than the current occupant of the office. Just because you don't think of him as a politician doesn't mean that he won't do a good job.
karmacondon commented on AI Beats Four Top Poker Players   bbc.co.uk/news/technology... · Posted by u/jeremyleach
karmacondon · 9 years ago
Does anyone have link to papers about the technology behind Libratus?
karmacondon commented on Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence   nytimes.com/2017/01/17/us... · Posted by u/coloneltcb
djsumdog · 9 years ago
Seven years is still a long time for whistle blowing. I'm glad to see she is still getting released though. It's important to note commuting the sentence is not a pardon. Chelsea will still have this conviction for the rest of her life.

I know there is a lot of controversy with Manning compared to Wikileaks et. al. as far as not redacting documents or using a discriminating news source to filter them. Still, I oppose state secrets and the Hillary e-mails are actually very chilling when you start reading through them. I still side with Manning. Too many of the Snowden documents were redacted with critical information (like which hardware encryption chips were compromised by the US government). No one has the actual Pentagon Papers outside of very specific news agencies. Manning gave the entire story to the people .. and I find it more sad that we didn't see more outrage and change from that release.

I also see another message here. Obama is trying to leave a positive view of the Democratic legacy with this lasting memory. It helps people forget about the predator drones, secret kill lists, continuation of torture, NSA spying and the expansion of war, military and the American hegemony throughout the world. I wish people would see this manipulation; this handout to the left to keep them angry at the incoming administration and not at the government that continues to spy on them and kill people without trial in and endless sea of never ending conflict.

karmacondon · 9 years ago
By definition, a whistle blower must reveal evidence of the commission of a crime. The term does not extend to "actions by the government that I disagree with" or "things that violate my personal interpretations of the Constitution"

If you misuse the term, you make it more difficult for legitimate whistle blowers to get the protection they deserve.

karmacondon commented on ‘Routine’ Jobs Are Disappearing   wsj.com/articles/routine-... · Posted by u/prostoalex
Ensorceled · 9 years ago
There are a fair number of comments dismissing this issue with a "retrain or get left behind" and expressing not a lot of sympathy for those who don't.

Remember, the average IQ in the US is just below 100[1]. Exactly what kind of jobs do you expect to retrain these people for? And how are they equipped to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps?

Most of these jobs provided on the job training or apprenticeships so it's not even a matter of "they did it once they can do it again".

Also, many are battling obesity and related illnesses such as diabetes or struggling with mental illness and/or addiction.

We need a systemic overhaul of the economic system and soon. Self driving vehicles will put 3-5 million out of work in the next decade.

[1] https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country#

karmacondon · 9 years ago
If the two options are retraining vs an overhaul of the economic system, I think retraining is much more likely.

No one wants to change careers. I certainly don't. But the economic realities are what they are. It would be nice to change the economy with basic income or government work programs, both of which I'm in favor of. I just don't see how that will realistically happen in the next 10-15 years.

So we need to make retraining great again. Invest time and money into making the process easy, affordable and open to as many people as possible. Maybe we need more schools, or organized apprenticeship programs or maybe teaching robots. This is a problem that has to be solved with innovations in business and/or technology. At least until we can gain the political position to make major changes to our financial and economic ways of life.

karmacondon commented on Elon Musk, Travis Kalanick, Indra Nooyi to Join Presidential Advisory Council   reuters.com/article/us-us... · Posted by u/randomname2
gnarbarian · 9 years ago
Watch what he does and who he appoints. Having a meeting with someone isn't always that substantial. The crazy stuff he says is just for shock and awe value. This is how he controls the narrative and keeps it away from weightier investigative criticisms of his actions Which are far more damaging and substantial. A remark can always be played off as a joke, bluster or banter. His supporters see that, and get a kick out of seeing him troll the media.

This way he makes some off the cuff remark that has people in news and social media tripping over themselves to denounce and loudly proclaim righteous indignation. His supporters laugh, the crazy fringe love him, and the media and the left chase their tail around in circles until he needs to distract them from something else.

karmacondon · 9 years ago
Please, name for me one thing that he has successfully distracted the 24 news cycle away from
karmacondon commented on Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week    · Posted by u/dang
karmacondon · 9 years ago
I don't know why we couldn't have voted on this. Whether it's a good idea or not, trying to impose something so broad on a community of hackers is an exercise in masochism.

I agree with everyone who has said that we're capable of making up our own minds about what to talk about. I don't think political discussions were ever a problem

karmacondon commented on Deep Learning: What, Why and Applications   aiehive.com/deep-learning... · Posted by u/troopkevin
BinRoo · 9 years ago
>> Figure-2 shows that performance of deep learning is much better than non-deep learning algorithm.

This is a nonsensical over-generalization.

>> In addition, it is automatically do the feature extraction.

At the cost of interpretability. Let's not even mention the dreadful nights of tweaking parameters (such as dropout probability, activation function, network architecture, learning rate, optimization function, various pre-processing tricks, pre-training to warm-start, convolution parameters, maxpool parameters, and so much more).

karmacondon · 9 years ago
Many algorithms have parameters that have be tweaked, and dreadful nights are common with any machine learning concept.

Deep learning is not "better" than other forms of algorithmic prediction. There's a best tool for every job

karmacondon commented on How to run for Florida Office   blog.sheasilverman.com/20... · Posted by u/SSilver2k2
mikestew · 9 years ago
I know that 31% is not insignificant but... it's not great either. If this was an incumbent, then there's probably a fair number of people who would've voted for _whoever_ the opposition candidate was.

See my other comment somewhere in this thread: IMO, the author got their arse kicked. I received 39%, didn't do nearly as much as the author, and I consider that a pretty solid defeat (but conveniently just shy of what I consider an arse kicking <g>). Somewhere there must be a study with hard numbers, but I figure X% just because I wasn't the other guy, Y% from voters who just randomly chose because they didn't really pay attention to the race, and 0.Z% from those that just screwed up the ballot. Leaving me with, I dunno, 20-25% who actually thought I was the better choice based on what they knew of me and the conversations we had. That's not a very good number. :-)

Not to take away from the main point, though. You want to run for office? You think you can do a better job? Then go do it. The barriers can be quite low for local offices, a bit higher for state offices. You'll get your arse kicked the first time around most likely. That's called "experience" and if you truly want to hold office, you'll be worlds ahead for next time. Most importantly, the vote is not a mandate on you as a person. I was soundly defeated, and that's fine: the people have spoken, and they said "come back in a few years when your better at this". Or they said, "the incumbent is doing a fine job, we see no reason to take a chance on someone new." But I never took it to be, "we just don't like you personally, mikestew."

karmacondon · 9 years ago
OP was running for state office, not the local city council. 31% is quite good
karmacondon commented on Why is machine learning ‘hard’?   ai.stanford.edu/~zayd/why... · Posted by u/Dawny33
yomly · 9 years ago
I appreciate that you've given a pretty topline overview but in the 90/10 example, if that 10% can be characterised and/or clustered can the algorithm be optimised for both groups involved? Appreciate that that's not always possible and can lead to lots of engineering overhead - curious what your thoughts are though...
karmacondon · 9 years ago
Practically this almost never works out. The 10% cluster is using a very small dataset and will produce inferior results. If you train a model based on only 10 people, you're prone to overfit that small sample
karmacondon commented on The unbearable smugness of the press   cbsnews.com/news/commenta... · Posted by u/andrenth
QuantumRoar · 9 years ago
Insulting millions of people serves no other purpose than to point out your own superiority in some way. I can't fathom how much hubris is necessary to do that without feeling ashamed of yourself.

How can it be so hard to be nice to others? Everybody disagrees with everybody else on something. Everybody has false ideas about the truth. Do we toss a kid in a meatgrinder when it has a weird idea about society? No, we include it in our discussions because opinions change when they are challenged. But when they cross the age of 16, or is it 18?, then they suddenly become demons that we need to get rid of. The cancer of our society. Where do you draw the line?

If you honestly think that you have a moral superiority that gives you the right to tell people what to do just because they are stupid (or pick any other negative attribute), then know that there are a lot of people to whom you are literally stupid (they are more intelligent and know more than you). Would it be okay if they told you what to do? If they tried to silence you? Ignored your desperate calls for help, which they think are stupid and wrong?

karmacondon · 9 years ago
Right is right and wrong is wrong. You have to stand up for the right thing even if that means telling other people that they are wrong, or even stupid.

You don't have to be smug about it, but that can be a tricky line to walk. Personally, I think it's better to advocate for certain values as respectfully as you know how and not worry about offending people who disagree. Placing too much emphasis on phrasing and tone is what people refer to derisively as "political correctness". It's best to focus more on saying the right thing, and less on how you say it

u/karmacondon

KarmaCake day1383October 12, 2014View Original