Seriously, the poster was presented yesterday at CVPR and ends up on /. today. There is nothing sensational about it. I'm getting sick of science turning into PR stunts all the time.

I have only one problem with fancy GUI that allow you to train a predicting model in 2 clicks: how confident can you be in your model, since all the parameters are masked and you have no knowledge about them? I still think it is dangerous to rely on a tool you don't understand and you can't control up to a satisfactory level, especially when it is to be used in prediction - something we expect to be highly reliable in many aspects due to old development of science like balistics.

I've written a ML library myself (also in Java, more lightweight than weka, but with no gui - although it comes with standalone binaries for some basic setups) and I can tell you there is no good default tunning that works well for every kind of situation. ML is seriously a young science that gets rapidly tricky even on very common problems, which is very different than field for which we have very accurate solvers that work most of the time (again balistics is probably a good example, at least because it is taught in school and sets the prototype of what we name science). I fear hidding the youth (and thus the imperfection) is only going to cause damage through misconception and false interpretation.

Asking if robots can be evil is about as futile as asking if a microwave can be happy.

That being said, there already are killer robots, with a pretty good track record in recent operations. But the evil lies in the humans who made them (from the top exec that launch the program to the small hand that does the job) and used them, not in the pile of steel and semiconductors.

caveat: Looking at your food, your microwave is probably sad, which explains their tendency to commit suicide.

JMLR is a fantastic journal, with high quality papers, high quality reviews, and completely open. The dream of many come true. I've always wondered why the idea did not spread to other fields.

If someone is willing to start a Journal of Computer Vision Research based on the same principles, count me in. I'll be happy to do editing/reviewing for such journal instead of well known IEEE/Elsevier/Springer journals.

Given that mir also means peace and considering what is happening in Ukraine, I sadly suppose you are right. Nonetheless I prefer puns when they don't carry a grim presage.

I am pretty much waiting for the other way around: when I, as a human, known that I am quite bad at handling the current situation and that the machine will do much better than I'll ever be capable of. In particular, I am thinking of traffic jams where you have to find maximum speed that maintains a smooth global flow, without falling into chaotic start/stop sequences like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Most humans typically tend to drive too fast in such situations, leading to an average speed well below what machines could very simply achieve. So basically, I'll drive when it's easy, and let the machine do the complicated stuff, as usual.

Funny, I often say that I have enough students to make having children unnecessary.

My wife and I are in the same situation, and I never understood the selfishness argument. Why is it selfish? To whom? What harm does it bring and to what?

The more I have this discussion with family and friends, the more it turns out to be pure jealousy towards us better enjoying our life. Most of them didn't expect it is that hard to raise children, and especially the many things you have to give up due to the lack of time to do it.

No, not if they didn't enabled the compromised feature.

Stop the bullshit. You're not changing your mind, you're trying to gain a lot very quickly by gambling.

If you don't understand the implications of what you're doing, please go to the casino instead of messing up our global economy.

This. The internet and the books of Richard Dawkins are endless sources of arguments.

On the kickstarter page:

Power: 750 Watts continuous
Speed: 18mph without pedaling
Range: 12 miles with standard battery, 20 miles with extended battery
Battery: 240Wh / 400Wh

Well, it seems with the extended battery you can get about 32 minutes or 9.6 miles at 18mph, which is only half the range...

Yeah, that's also my reaction. I regularly do between 50 and 60 hrs a week by working 11 - 12 hrs a day the whole week (and nothing the week end cause I would otherwise go insane), I've been doing occasonially 70 hrs (that is, add 10 hrs during the WE), and I think my max was around 80 hrs for some relly tough deadline near the end of my PhD. Right now, I finished a hard period, and I'll be calming things down to around 40 hrs a week in the few next month to regain some health. Seriously, 60 is hard, around 70 is just insane, and over that is ruining your health more quickly than anything else I've ever seen.

I've never met someone who was at work before me in the morning (8am) and still there when I quit (9pm) every day, and I'm "only" doing between 50 and 60. Of the friends that say they do big weeks, most of them try to call me before 8pm, so they're lying. So yeah, basically people count commute and lunch when they say over 60, and I am pretty sure not a lot of people have experienced a real 60 hrs week of work, without counting lunch, commute and pauses (which makes it around 14 hrs a day when you add these moments).

And anyone who has a kid and says he does over 50 is just lying...

A cat is a cat, no more, no less!

Design a clean API and stick to well known coding standards.

This is /., no need to read more than the title.