dcalacci

>Either the studies are not confounded as the author claims, or drivers giving cyclists less space is not the problem he thinks it is because those cyclists are actually safer cyclists.

mm, I think you missed something here -- It is always a bad thing for a car to give a cyclist less space. Even if a cyclist wearing a helmet is more likely to be a safer cyclist, giving that cyclist less space is dangerous. It doesn't matter if the cyclist is a safer rider than most -- what matters is that the driver may _think_ the cyclist is a safe rider because of the helmet, and so may give the cyclist less space.

"I seriously didn't think it would work at all but to my surprise it did so I put my phone along side my $500 Valentine detector and they both went off same time"

amazing

The thing that sets Jawbone apart from other health wearables companies is how much Jawbone has embraced the idea of providing insights to its customers.

The next iteration of these devices (Basis Peak, Jawbone up3, whatever fitbit comes up with) will no longer be just about quantifying your physical life. With more data comes an increased ability to make inferences about your behavioral patterns, and that's going to be the killer feature of the future.

The first company that actively tries to answer how to instigate real behavioral change in its users through notifications, insights, and other motivational tools will be the first to make fitness wearables ubiquitous devices.

Of course, the band has to be actually _wearable_, too.

Jawbone is doing both of these things, faster than the competition.

Basis is _just_ starting to try and do insight work, after years of perfecting their sensor infrastructure. Fitbit is a toy in comparison, and afaik they haven't even touched doing inference work on small individual user data.

The insights I get from Jawbone now suck, but they're doing those with _just my steps and sleep_. Who knows what will become apparent with my heart rate and automatic activity identification.

this is a likely side effect of selling user data to data brokers or data co-ops, where companies sell individual user data to a larger user database that's accessible to all companies in the co-op or that pay for the data broker's services.

an interesting case of 'who owns what' in terms of user data. You created the data - does that mean you own it? does it mean you should have a right to delete all record of you or that data for a service?

I wonder when the productivity benefit to ATK employees will outweigh the $$ they spent paying you to make this.

It actually would have been very interesting to poll employees and get data on 'failed bathroom trips' per day per employee before you finished the project.

From there, you could extrapolate the (supposed) daily productivity increase and do things like plotting the $$ or minutes saved per day on the screen.

This is awesome. Great job.

Have you guys modeled what this would do to the airbnb economy as a function of how many users actively use your tool?

shamelessly promoting work by a colleague of mine that detects sarcasm in online product reviews:

http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~oren/papers/sarcasmAmazonICWSM10.p...

I use seafile as well - I host it on my digital ocean instance and it works very well and things sync very quickly.

best part is that it does automatic, granular snapshots of my data - I've stopped using git for things like papers because I know it's backed up in seafile.

I get furious at the types of comments that plague these submissions to hacker news. usually it starts when someone submits an article that in some way holds society at large accountable for things like the lack of women in STEM, or someone’s difficulty in entering the “hacker” or “maker” culture.

this article hits both targets really well. and, like clockwork, the top comment does the following:

1. immediately suggests that it’s absurd that the author could blame society in any way for her difficulty/inability to enter the field of computer science.

2. uses his now-accepted theory that it is always, unfailingly, willpower (and only willpower) that prevents one from doing anything to basically posit that sexism doesn't exist (because it's all willpower). he implies that sexism in tech is a fault of a character flaw - impressionability

3. completely invalidates the concept and social power of identifying as part of a larger group. this guy is so privileged and used to identifying as a “hacker” that he can’t even comprehend the concept that someone might want to identify as a hacker (but have trouble doing so, say, because of comments like this)

if it’s not something like the above, it’s a comment that completely ignores the content of the article, and nit-picks about something like what the author _actually_ meant by the term “hacker” (which, if it was spoken by a man, would most likely not raise such questions)

I know I'm spitting venom, but I see this stuff so often and say nothing...I felt like it was necessary here.

>So everyone is mad cause they used their own approach to security

No, that's not why people are upset at all.

People are upset because whether or not someone has been able to break their system under the constraints of the contest means almost nothing.

Did you even read the article?

>So here's my idea for a great emacs-based document editor: markdown with inline math previews coupled with a full live preview to the side. All the necessary modes for this already exist

So org-mode has you covered there, basically. Org isn't markdown, but it's close (and full of tons of note-taking features), and you can do inline latex with live preview in org-mode. I use it for notes all the time.

a solipsist's life is far from an ethical one.

you mention creating, but nowhere do you mention who one should create for. the ethical reason for creating a product is to better others lives, not your own.

you also suggest that bettering others' lives does not better your own:

>i.e., because you know that the specific cause you're supporting will make your own life better

this ignores the joy that most people experience when they genuinely help others, the sense of community people feel when they come together as a group for a cause, and the feeling of hope that your community service or charity may impart on those who are less fortunate than you can likely imagine.

assisting a charity is not 'giving up' your life for most. It's enriching it.

As an aside, your comment detracts from the value of charity to begin with, when the article is about whether or not a specific _form_ of charity is more beneficial than others. I think your comment adds little to the discussion and ignores the content of the article entirely.

I didn't know this data was available! I wish we had the same breadth available through the MBTA. I'd be interested in using this data to:

- plan travel directions based on past congestion patterns

- pair this with any data found for NY's bus system or taxi system to map out hubs vs destination stations

- examine stations' frequency of repair and see if congestion at a station correlates with the frequency of repair; try to predict dates of repair

very cool!

This is great. I started working on something very similar to this a few weeks ago. Your project is much more mature, so I may end up contributing.

I definitely would. I've been searching for a way to write plaintext notes and have them available "in the cloud", or at least through a web interface.

Evernote's appeal is how easy it is to manage multimedia content in notes. I haven't come across an elegant solution to that in plain-text.

The closest I've come is using Markdown in VimWiki, and then exporting my notes as HTML.

I think that whether or not technologists are arrogant does matter, regardless of perception.

In Silicon Valley, arrogance is really about ambition. There are some who want to replace political processes with crowdsourced or individual solutions. These are ambitious goals, but the problems that they attempt to address (law-making, social justice) are far more difficult than many of these people realize. The goal of disrupting current channels of social change and policy are lofty, but assuming that it can be done without help from existing institutions is arrogant, and will lead to both a toxic culture and an incredulous image, even for those of us whose ideas may have a chance of bringing about real change.

>If you want to be heard, you need to "show that you care"

I think you're definitely correct on that point. Some may view playing within the existing infrastructure as pandering, but it's often one of the only ways of expressing a serious commitment to change.

> So is lobbying the "subtler, wiser" way of thinking? If it is, I'm personally ready for something new.

I'd argue that the 'maturity' rhetoric expresses something different. The point behind Morozov's (and others') criticism is that difficult social/policy issues cannot be solved through individual citizen/consumer action alone. I think the main criticism is that silicon valley often acts from within isolation. 'Disrupting' consumer behavior is not enough to drive social or political change in many cases.

The arrogance that people speak of when they refer to silicon valley is one of ambition. People in the valley envision replacing traditional law-making with crowdsourcing, but forging public policy is far too difficult for a solution that simple.

To those who make these criticisms, the stereotypical startup founder claiming that their product will cause meaningful social and/or political change is naive. They also make the claim that such a 'solutionist' approach will often worsen, not better, the problems that such a product addresses.

The fact that a handful of technology leaders are attempting to work with the existing political infrastructure reflects a newfound maturity in the culture - one of collaboration and modesty. Where previous technologists looked at the existing infrastructure, muttered "we can do better", and failed, these people are simply trying to say "we can help".

Totally on point. I don't think it's useful to compare the value of a successful PhD experience to some amount of money. This is especially true for the people who would be considering a PhD in the first place.

I agree that people value the environment they work in, but I think that to the people you outline, working in a culture that values original ideas and open discourse is more important than having workplace perks like free sodas.

A PhD is definitely not the only time that a person can delve into original research or knowledge, you're right.

But I don't see any place where Dr. Might suggests that it's the _only_ experience that can lead to original research.

I think a PhD is definitely one of the only experiences where upon completion you are required to have contributed to the world of original and new knowledge in some way, though.

Yeah, it's likely that the values in the article don't really mean what they are presented to mean due to average career choices.

This article would say something more meaningful if it included data only from PhD's that attempted to go into industry.

I think that although this article notes some important disappointments in the way PhD students are treated, it is speaking to an audience that most likely doesn't exist.

I don't think it's useful to compare the value of a successful PhD experience to some amount of money. This is especially true for the people who would be considering a PhD in the first place.

Whether or not someone pursues a PhD likely comes down to the personal value they believe they will get from the process, not the projected economic benefit.

On some level, it makes sense that the majority of PhD-holders do not have a starting-gate income advantage over BS holders. In recent years, a BS has become a gateway to the workforce.

I think this is partly because of the ease of hiring it presents to employers. If someone is a college graduate, that serves as a soft guarantee of ability, responsiblity, and education.

PhD work is by nature ill-suited to the workforce. Research positions are rare, and finding an open opportunity that speaks perfectly to a unique education will be difficult. Hiring a PhD student may only come with the 'soft guarantee' mentioned above, and little else, if the position does not align with the students' research.

It's good to see a group actively trying to move PGP into the mainstream. I think that PGP is valuable, and that this work is worthwhile if only because it makes it easier to use PGP on a day-to-day basis.

check your privilege

yes, you're right. I misread your comment.