Actually, the one wow I really do not get all wizards are not under is very simple. Merlin laid down his interdict due to a crisis of magic being used in wars in utterly unrestrained ways. Blocking people from learning certain kinds of magic is a daft way of stopping that. What you do is you take every single wizarding child of 8, and make them swear to never use any magic that would harm more than one person. Still free to fight, still free to defend themselves, just noone capable of area effect magics of destruction anymore.

What's Brin's stupid ending?

I'm a fan, but if I were EY I would be worried about getting the nomination and then coming in under No Award. That seems a more likely outcome than somehow winning Best Novel.

From chapter 38, when Harry buys the Quibbler:

"Gosh," Harry said half a minute later, "you get a seer smashed on six slugs of Scotch and she spills all sorts of secret stuff. I mean, who'd have thought that Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew were secretly the same person?"

EDIT: Then,

"And I'm secretly sixty-five years old."

Which is also true, because of Voldemort inside him. Which leaves....

"And I'm betrothed to Hermione Granger, and Bellatrix Black, and Luna Lovegood, and oh yes, Draco Malfoy too..."

I would like you to nominate HPMOR for Best Novel in the 2016 Hugos.

Hey gwern, you scared?

"the stunbolt leapt out of her wand and - - slowed to a stop in front of Professor Quirrell's raised hand, rippling in midair like it was still trying to fly and making a slight hissing sound."

Does LV really need hands to stop stunbolts? Why did he try to evade?

Hmm, mostly just articles where they get better results with more NN layers/more examples, which are both limited by hardware capacity and have seen large gains from things like using GPUs. Current algos still have far fewer "neurons" than the actual brain AFAIK. Plus, in general, faster hardware allows for faster/cheaper experimentation with different algorithms.

I've seen some AI researchers (eg Yann Lecun on Facebook) emphasizing that fundamental techniques haven't changed that much in decades, yet results continue to improve with more computation.

And now we really know why Harry had to carry around his father's rock. For practice

I thought that we knew that like 30 chapters ago?

And now we really know why Harry had to carry around his father's rock. For practice:

And meanwhile, just like magic hadn't defined a Transfigured unicorn as dead for purposes of setting off wards, Voldemort's horcruxes wouldn't define a Transfigured Voldemort as dead and try to bring him back.

That was the hope, anyway.

Harry's scar twinged one last time when the steel ring went on his pinky finger, holding the tiny green emerald in contact with his skin. Then his scar subsided, and did not hurt again.

Fame is harmful, not helpful, to Harry's goals.

Is that true? Harry wishes to reform or replace the government of Magical Britain, and being the hero who defeated Voldemort twice would make that a lot easier (as Voldemort himself acknowledged). Turning Hermione into the Girl-Who-Lived dilutes that effect, and also brings all his fame-related problems down upon her.