jkeisling/hacker-news-corpus-2007-2022 huggingface dataset:
The "unemployment rate" is a nearly meaningless number that gets re-defined and manipulated by whoever's talking to make whatever point they want to make. It's nearly useless for figuring out how many people aren't working that could, or how many people want work but can't get it.
I would like to add that a good software architect (type 2 of course ;->) also needs a good deal of domain knowlege. Designing for the most probable future changes is the hardest but most effective part of that role.
Your parents don't in all cases. I went to a good school and my brother went to a bad school. My parents didn't choose that. The good school did, it was selective in its students. Selective school aren't all that rare.
Yeah I'm getting this problem as well.

I need a better diverse and robust recommendation system from Spotify (at this point I'm addicted, I listen maybe 5 hours on average) and a lot of times I get the same n number of songs again and again.

99% of the weeks Discover Weekly has come out, they have 1 or 2 real nice songs but the rest are the same "garbage" I've been listening to for a while.

Anyways, I agree, Discover Weekly needs a revamp.
I love the mission but it's hard to justify leaving FAANG for Tesla or SpaceX when you'll get paid half as much for twice the work.

It would be cool to work on Autopilot, but isn't it stressful when Elon promises that your feature will ship in 2 weeks and then you have to bust your ass for 6 months to get it out? Because it seems like that's how things work over there.
Pack animals, RVs, humans, tug boats, and much more check off everything you just described.
Their version of ridiculous might be another's "okay". I think most people would consider $500k/yr to be ridiculous but it ain't enough to retire in the bay - even if you saved all $2.8m you netted over 10 years. It's not enough - you will pay off your mortgage and maybe afford the property tax for the rest of your life but it won't pay for anything else...
One of my competitors used Delphi to write their software. One part of the software ran under the print spooler so when 64-bit Windows came along they were stuffed as the 64-bit version of Delphi was slow to arrive. I did quite well out of that.
The following processor, if it can properly parallelize 3D Math tasks (or if it could be adapted to do so):

"World’s First 1k-Processor Chip, Powered by a Single AA Battery (2016)"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26140957

...Might make a good candidate for a future GPU!

...As might any massively-parallel "CPU" architecture, for example, the Adapteva Parallella:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapteva

>"The 16-core Parallella has roughly 5.0 GFLOPs/W, and the 64-core Epiphany-IV made with 28 nm estimated as 50 GFLOPs/W (single-precision),[27] and 32-board system based on them has 15 GFLOPS/W.[28] For comparison, top GPUs from AMD and Nvidia reached 10 GFLOPs/W for single-precision in 2009–2011 timeframe.[29]"

In other words, whenever you hear about a CPU with a "massive amount of cores" -- think "could make a great GPU", or "could make a great GPU with the right adjustments" -- from this point forward!

In other words, any massively parallel multi-core CPU architecture -- becomes or can become -- a candidate architecture to become a GPU -- with further changes/optimizations...
FWIW, I agree with the point you're making, vis-a-vis system resiliency. Ideally the system should be able to tolerate having a data center burn down. My comments above about the value of sprinklers are really addressing a separate issue, which is the immediate life hazard risk to the people working in the data center in the event of a fire. With my "firefighter hat" on so to speak, I don't really much care about the servers and the data in the short-term if there' a fire - I just care that everybody goes home safely.
Hm, yes, I think you are right. That is odd.
| I have yet to see any proof that the heredim are breaking them at a much larger scale than the other non-heredi groups.

What about the weddings and funerals involving 1000s of people?
>intuitively my brain does not grok why it gets easier to move something by pulling a bit more rope than usual

Warning: This is probably wrong because I am conjuring this from my mind without looking up any resources.

You have rope. The rope can carry 50lb. You want to lift something that weighs 100kg. You cut the rope in half and attach two ropes to the stone and the ceiling. Now you got a 100lb weight attached on two 50lb ropes. The cross section area of the rope is 1 square inch (random number). The rope happens to hold exactly 50lb per square inch. We write this down as 50 psi. But wait. Since we added two ropes we have increased the cross section thus we have 100lb hanging on 2 square inches of rope. We are still within 100lb/2i^2 = 50psi. What if we have 4 ropes? 100lb/4i^2 = 25psi and so on. The amount of force each rope applies on the stone is shrinking. Since 1 rope = 1 square inch we get 25 pounds of force on each rope.

Now lets go back to pulleys. There is no meaningful difference between statically attaching rope (although one end has to be attached) and letting it hang off a pulley or letting an object hang off a pulley. The end result is that you have effectively attached the rope 3 times to the ceiling and what you are holding is only a faction of the cross section area that is actually holding up the stone. You have to pull more rope because there is 4 times as much rope and the wall is just holding the rope at a fixed point.
Batteries don't work all that well at these lower temperatures. I suppose if your Tesla is in a garage that would work, though.
That is exactly what power companies are going to do.
Fascinating stuff. The idea that visual and language generation could be generalized with the same underlying model was the most interesting part of Lex Fridman's podcast with Ilya Sutskever in May: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13CZPWmke6A
I can testify that I would not buy a laptop without a numpad, it's in my opinion absolutely essential. I literally cannot comprehend how someone wouldn't want one.

As you can see, it's all a matter of opinion.
People adopt new things all the time. Look at what happened when smart phones came long - everybody started making apps for them. I think people on smart phones spend more time in apps than they do on the web.

Anyway, the new browser could totally embed another browser engine to show legacy web pages.
Dear Graycat,

I really enjoy your posts and your writing style. Thanks much. I am currently working on some math problems as a part of a business that makes accessible to Indians who do not have access to structured banking services. Would love to discuss it with you, if you are inclined. My email is takenottie at google's mail. Thanks.
Again, the fact that you compare reading the New York Times to PornHub says a lot more about you that it does anyone else.

You're less rational than you think.
I cannot comment on anything about my exit. You should not assume this is my choice, or assume anything really. Sorry, can't say anything specific at all.
Location-based pay is based on your market value. Different locations have different markets.
A friend of mine obtained a bottle of blue ketchup once.
In the Swedish system, all schools cost the same: 0. So there is no reason to target specifically wealthy students, all students are worth the same to you as school owner.

In fact, they can't even accept students based on grades, there are only 4 criteria they are allowed to use when selecting students: location, time in queue, siblings in the school and whether you went to pre-school there.

So what you end up with are students with parents that have enough forethought to put your name down early on.

> You can't "optimize" what's essentially a service institution.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, obviously you could in theory most definitely optimise the education. That is what private schools here in Denmark tend to do.
> Also, I doubt that a rogue strong AI would struggle with opening a regular online bank or brokerage account.

I very much doubt disembodied strong AI is possible in the first place. If nature and physical reality in general is anything to go by, intelligence and agency correlate strongly with physical interaction with the environment (e.g. plants are less "intelligent" than most animals).

Even though there's an argument to be made that such interactions can be simulated, research has shown that optimisation algorithms tend to exploit the imperfections of the simulation instead of developing generalised solutions or just become instances of Clever Hans [1].

I'm puzzled how some ML/AI researchers come to the conclusion that an algorithm without access to external information and with no means of manipulating its environment can do _anything_ harmful at all (aside from wasting processing cycles or bandwidth). Malware has explicitly specified functionality (e.g. delete or encrypt files, etc.) that didn't just "evolve" out of nowhere and requires very specific target environments (OS, APIs, access rights, etc.).

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/31/this-clever-ai-hid-data-fr...
citation needed, most of the increases in global wealth and output are due to technological innovation and increased trade and improved governance. If you are going to claim that all the worlds wealth is just extractive you are going to need a big source for that. Most economic historians disagree with you.
And there are cryptos like Nano that fulfill this original promise.

Technology evolves over time. Just because its not perfect at the first go, doesn’t mean it should go in the trash.
Every codebase is clean and elegant when in the head of a single person. How big is your codebase and how many people work on it?
I'm a little confused about what git annex is - I think it's perhaps a basic file sync utility that uses git behind the scenes?
I wonder how much of early web we have already lost. All of the forums, user generated content and so on just gone...
Let me tell you the single reason I haven't switched to Elixir yet: I develop backend and frontend (SPA) so I'd rather just stick with a single language and library catalog. It helps that there's plenty of libraries in JS land too. I would love to just write elixir code but at the end of the day I feel sticking with node+browser js is the more pragmatic choice right now.
I'm saying that:

1) Actual value to people is mostly created in software that's being used repeatedly. The tools people use for work, to run their errands, and to communicate.

2) For any tool that's used repeatedly, if there's no path for the user to grow ever more proficient and efficient in using it, the tool is wasting that user's time.

> now you're saying that software that takes MORE time commitment saves you time?

No, I'm saying that less time spent on using software to accomplish unit of value is better. For software used repeatedly, this is achieved by learning to use the software better - and that can only happen if the software offers room to grow, and isn't just a Fisher-Price toy.
FWIW, Netscape got bought out by AOL, but not before it spun off Mozilla. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape

It may be hard to believe, but the first iteration of Internet Explorer on Macintosh (back on System 8) was __solid__. IE, at least on PowerMacs, was way faster and more reliable than either NCSA Mosaic or Navigator.
They're both valuable. In linguistics for instance graffiti can tell you things about the language and its evolution that the formal language won't communicate, like how certain letters stop being pronounced or become pronounced differently. Or how some grammatical constructions shift for instance.
Apparently here in China you get free power (charging network access) for life when you buy certain new EVs for ~USD$30K. I think personal transport in developed markets globally has clearly begun moving to a service rather than ownership model because the overheads associated with driving (license, parking, maintenance, vehicular ownership transaction regulatory and process overhead, depreciation, sobriety, cleaning, etc.) are just not worth vs. aging populations, shrinking family units, increasing urban densities, services like grocery delivery and a generally more mobile and connected workforce.

Given this model shift, what differentiators exist? In a service world, it's all about timeliness, fitness for purpose, driver professionalism and cost. Nobody gives a shit about which hardware widget the manufacturer stuffed in the body anymore. It's literally irrelevant. They've lost the customer to the service provider, in the same way that telcos lost their customers to mobile device manufacturers. Telco data was commodified and SMS and phone use nosedived, just as vehicles are now commodified and demand for abnormal features is surely dwindling. Smart manufacturers will become the service provider, thereby vertically integrating to gain maximum profit, at the same time removing old customer-facing assumptions around vehicle maintenance and related logistics paths to minimize downtime and cut costs. Driving, at least in cities, will be seen as something poor people do to earn/save money. Fully autonomous EV fleet maintenance stations by 2035.
I’m expecting truly engineered food to be a breakthrough over the next 100 years. Imagine people being able to eat something akin to a chocolate bar that has all the nutrients one would expect from a full meal. Protein shakes are close to this, but they are still just a mix of vegetables mostly (and the ones I drink have high sodium.) I know everyone is expecting lab grown meat, and I’m sure there will be some of that, but I think we aren’t thinking about the possibilities and it could be people in 300 years eat textures and flavors far better than anything we can imagine, while being as healthy as physically possible.
Does anyone know if these new tokens are backwards compatible with software that used the old tokens? By which I mean, I’m using a version of Git Tower from before they switched to a subscription model, and I’m wondering whether regenerating my tokens will make me unable to log in.
Also, what if you need a permit?
The salt has to be present in your system so you can use it to hash the provided password and check that it matches the hash you have on file. People usually keep it right next to the password.

The salt serves two functions:
Make rainbow table attacks more difficult

Obscuring cases where two users have the same password. If two users both use "blah7$monkey" as their password and you don't use a salt, they will hash to the same value.

If I steal your password database and I want to compromise one account, a salt offers no protection. Hash algo and password strength are what matter.
Bcrypt is backed by Blowfish, designed by Bruce Schneier. Go look it/him up. It's secure.

Well, yes, I trust the Blowfish cipher (and GP probably does too). The question is how we can be sure it isn't being somehow misapplied, i.e. whether the way bcrypt uses it opens some other hole. That's what I (and probably GP) would like to see an expert weigh in on.
I prefer to have a consistent code base, then I can use the internal tools of my editor, which are not aware of Nim's identifier rules.
I was a student very recently and if I class was boring, or too easy (easy enough I could get by without good notes) I distracted myself, with or without a laptop. Most Mathematics professors don't allow laptops to be brought to class, so I planned out personal projects, made UMLs, and at one point wrote shitty poetry if I got bored.

If he's going to ban laptops, I hope he refrains from reading off powerpoint slides. Any professor or teacher who does has given up their right to be mad if students aren't paying attention.
Honestly, I think it is up to the student to decide. If they find they don't pay enough attention with a laptop in front of them, then they should stop pulling it out. If they feel like they barely get anything out of the lectures and decide to stay home, that is also their decision. Its strikes me as odd that it is so common in college now to require attendance or attempt to force student to pay attention.
I typically only pay less attention if I don't feel the professor is offering me any new content or insight into the material. If reading the book and doing the assigned homework gets me the same knowledge, then I only feel inclined to half listen to the lecture.
I think it is often the pride of the professor which drives them to ban laptops or phones, they want everyone to listen to them, even if it is receptive and boring. Instead of addressing the problems with their delivery, they blame the students. I always listen to entertaining, interesting professors.
Maintaining any kind of list is difficult and it's very easy to get off the track. Lets see if this app avoids this with daily email update.

PS: Design looks quite good.
AdRoll - San Francisco

If you like Python (or C or D or Erlang) and petabytes of data, this is your dream job. AdRoll is one of the fastest growing adtech company, already producing $100M+ in revenue with a small engineering team.

Analytics is so critical to us that a large part of the stack, including our high-performance, in-memory data backend, is developed in-house in Python (Numba), Erlang, and C. Read more here

http://tuulos.github.io/pydata-2014/

http://tuulos.github.io/sf-python-meetup-sep-2013/

I'm happy to tell you more by email (ville@adroll.com) or over coffee in SF.

PS. We are also hiring Javascript engineers! Btw, we write our own convex optimizers, if machine learning is close to your heart - ping me for more info.
I vote for not making the language more complicated than it already is in Java 7. Oh but we have Java 8 with closures and stuff, well OK how about no more complicated than Java 8. Please? Instead maybe introduce useful things that make programmers more productive. How about implicit generics. Where this whole mess of T and Any and <: extendsT< gobbldygook> melts away. Notice how a new class extends Object automatically? It always has. Why do I have to muck about with all the fancy and overly complex syntax. Give me the features of all of that but abstract it away so I can just write what I need to and it works implicitly. Either that or just leave the dang language alone and go make some cool libraries.
There are so many languages on my "to learn" list that it's ridiculous. And I never seem to find much time to actually spend on new languages. But, realistically, the one(s) I may actually be able to spend some time on in 2015 are probably:

Javascript - OK, strictly speaking I "know" javascript to some extent, but I don't consider myself an expert on it, and I'll probably be using it more and learning more, for the foreseeable future.

Scala. I keep saying this, but I think I'll have more reasons to actually spend time on this in 2015.

Clojure. See above, re: Scala.

Prolog. Probably wishful thinking that I'll find time to put into this, but we'll see. Some of my interests include NLP, and Prolog has a reputation for being good for NLP applications, so I may finally start exploring that world.

R. The interest is there, but time is, again, the limiting factor. If a real world reason to use R emerges, then I might actually get somewhere with it.

The stuff that's on my list that I seriously doubt I'll even touch in 2015 includes: Erlang, Julia, Nim, Haskell, Ceylon, Kotlin, Ada, Go, Rust, Elixir, etc.
It sounds like you're saying those things are not an inherent limit of the pure functional programming model, and support it by listing ways to fix it that break the functional purity.
Always great to hear a review like this! This is what I felt but I am surrounded by people who have read the book and have loved it.
I think this was one of Zucker's feature requests.
The Russian mob has a hand in everything important in Russia. If you go as a tourist, you'll probably feel fairly safe and nobody will notice you. If you go as an investor and try to start a company you will most definitely deal with the mob. It will probably start with you dealing with the police and other 'officials' who are actually a front for the mob.
The full quote is "could not pay me enough to invest in Russia as she is situated today". For what it's worth at no time would I have invested in Russia. Now, a decade ago, 50 years ago or 100 years ago.

It's not about meanness towards Russia. It's about understanding how things function, or don't function, in Russia and actively choosing not to be a part of it. Russia has vast resources both materially and in it's people. I would very much like to invest in Russia but not the Russia that exists today.

I'm not a fan of the "foreign investment will help change Russia for the better" theory. As we've seen so many times this past decade, change comes from within and can not be forced by outsiders.

I can go on about the insanity that is Russia but the article does a good job at that. The bottom line is that profits are not so hard to find that one should be looking towards Russia to find them. Not only is the risk far too great but voluntarily supporting the state of things in Russia is too high a price for me to pay.

See "Drug dealers shouldn't make iPhone apps" from yesterday, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1408445.
I guess this is tricky because you want all that energy to go into deforming the wood and not the nail. The physics is beyond me here.

Intuitively, I feel like weighty hits tend to drive the nail into the wood, whereas fast hits just bash the nail about. That might be more about accuracy though?

(Also my anecdote confirmed by someone with practical experience, see other comment.)
Localisation as well. DDG lets me pick the UK but almost all results are US centric.
Dan Held has a pretty good thread on twitter that goes over the Bitcoin energy argument pretty well (imho)...

https://twitter.com/danheld/status/1351235080103096331

Disclosure: very large eth miner, using hydro electricity that would have otherwise gone to waste. Generated power is very expensive to transmit. I prefer gpus to asics because at least ethash is constrained to a more widely available piece of re-useable hardware and doesn't require the latest release in order to have the best roi.
Ethereum set aside tons of eth to fund development in the premine. I wonder if they are broke, greedy, dumb, or what.
Low hood would also differentiate it from most consumer vehicles for a good reason.

Pedestrian deaths are rising in the US, both total and per-capita. In large part this can be attributed to the increasing popularity of taller crossovers and SUVs, which strike passengers higher on the body and are more likely to knock passengers under the vehicle and towards the wheels rather than bouncing over the hood.
When did 5 hour interviews become the new normal? That seems sadistic to me.
Thanks for passive aggresively talking to a third party about me as "this person" and thanking them for the courage to discuss with me.

Thanks for having some persecution syndrome or conspiracy theory about "the downvote brigade" and about me having "some other agenda for promoting this story".

In actually, I don't give a duck about the E-ink industry, but I do dislike the effect patents have in general, and am talking out of general principles about that.

You might be happy with E-ink patents in particular or patens in general. You might also be an E-ink industry insider (wouldn't that make you the one that is more possible to have an "agenda" ot at least a vested interest?), and have far more information that me, a mere e-ink consumer, about the impact of patents there.

You could still respond (or not respond) on a thread about the impact on patents (on e-ink and in general) without being rude and second-guessing the other person.

How about that?
Honestly it was perfectly fine before the shutdown. Bay area will rebound almost completely 12-18 months after the government lets people live again.
He is above average in fitness and muscularity, and he is an action hero actor, so it's pretty close!