skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The timing is funny, I just started playing with Go a few days ago (the 1.5 release as well as the impressive amount of software that's actually been shipped with Go convinced me to give it a go - pun intended, somewhat).

I must say, its a great little language. Love the tooling, the dependency management, it was even incredibly simple to set up the dev environment (basically just DLed the binaries, added to my path, installed the Go-plus package for Atom, and everything just worked).

It is a little shocking to work with a relatively bare-bones language since I work mostly with R (which has a package for everything it seems), but its been a lot of fun. I'll probably do something bigger with it in the next little while.
>Indeed, they're extolling the _simplicity_ one gets. To quote their FAQ: [...]
If they can find a way to add it that doesn't take away the _simplicity_

You're missing my point because you've used "simplicity" twice in a way that I was trying to define in a more holistic manner.

You, and the FAQ you quoted, was talking about language-specification-simplicity. I was trying to make the discussion more cognizant of holistic-simplicity which means new complexity is created when one part is "simpler".

>There are reasonable ways to write code that largely avoids them

There are workarounds for everything, sure. Workarounds affect holistic-simplicty. Also, what's "reasonable" is subjective. In any case, I'm not convinced that language-spec-simplicity trumps holistic-simplicity.
Well any turing complete language is suitable for compiler development work, but yeah Clojure is designed around symbolic computation, recursion and things like that.
I'm not exactly sure what your getting at but in reference to it all comes to an end. Yes, ETFs are overcrowded and even Goldman wants a piece, so now you know it's corrupt. :)

http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20150911/FREE/15091997...

You also have tulips to blame in 1637. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
Gee, I've been using a handrolled program that a) figures out what other program to delegate to as well as what options to pass and b) makes sure unpacking whatever results in exactly one new entry in the current directory, that is, unpacks into a newly created directory if there's more than one thing top-level in the archive. Maybe I should have been posting it on the internet!
NaCl Crystals
He should have his lawyers paid for and reasonable compensation.

This doesn't mean Chinese espionage is not a problem. Just because your iphone/android is made in China doesn't mean there isn't plenty of sensitive tech mot made in China.
I know the pain. Well, it would be worth your while once you get to it - as I said, "Ubik" is pretty awesome. "The Man in the High Castle" too, although it's different, not that much of "pure" s-f element, it's political fiction, but still very Dickesque (it depicts a world where nazis won the war - where certain writer gains fame for his alternative history novel in which they actually lost :) ).
The other problem is that it didn't seem to have anything in particular to say about Jesus or America. (Gotta appeal to the international audience, after all...) So the allegory is pointless.
Anti-intellectual seems an off key remark to me, I'd say Go just takes a different school of thought. Intellectualism doesn't mean everything should follow one path.
Apple, in refusing backdoor access to data, may face fines
Pisces V is a manned submarine that adds a lot of weight and price.

The toy I mentioned is unmanned (=> small) and could be placed in a different body, while reusing the same electronics and software. Not done, but certainly doable.
> It certainly isn't a natural phenomenon.

Now, this is interesting. You mean that we humans aren't a natural phenomenon? :D
Boom! Another Greg Egan fan, here. Reading through Axiomatic right now and loving it.

One thing I've noticed (& which I'm sure a lot of people have stated) is that his fictional works are mostly just a platform for him to explore ideas. Whether or not they entertain is a side effect. A few stories on Axiomatic for instance end rather abruptly. It is as if Egan just couldn't be bothered with tying everything in a neat little package once he'd already finished exploring the implications of a particular philosophical idea.
I updated my post with a link to an mrov that can reach 3000m
I think the greatest features of the ML family for compiler development are great AST representations (as algebraic data types) with pattern-matching. When you change the AST, it is very easy to go and fix all the AST transformations to handle less/more cases or fix the types.

There are other great features for compiler development in the ML family, but almost all of them revolve around static types.

Can you explain what you mean when you say Lisp is excellent for compiler development? When changing the AST, how would you go about changing all the code that needs to be changed?
A question for people in the know - if there's a research/treatment that can not be patented/monetized due to its generic nature, but it still requires millions of dollars in trials - is it doomed to never be done?
A Template Engine (500 Lines or Less Series)
^ amen.
You still haven't demonstrated why they are not 'improving the world'.

They may not be doing it to the extent of your liking, but they are certainly are improving it (if only for the people who choose to use their service).
Two things come to mind immediately:

1. Cancer cells are human cells and behave very similar to human cells compared to foreign bacteria or viruses which have a vastly different metabolism.

2. Cancer is not a single disease but a gazillion different mutations which may have vastly different characteristics.

Point 1 most of the time prevents cures such as "kill the human cells" from working effectively without killing the patient, too. Successufull cancer cells look so "human" that even the immune system doesn't see the difference. Point 2 means that the "cure for cancer" may be found for some kinds of cancer but there are thousands more. If we cure all cancers known today we will find new ones when the patients are just a few years older. Remember that the death rate increases exponentially with age and so will diseases like cancer.
Look at Wirth's and Gutknecht's Lilith project. After seeing Xerox's PC's, they independently from Apple invented a PC and GUI line involving: a custom computer; a CPU from bit-slice chip; an ideal assembler (M-code); a high-level, safer language (Modula-2) built for it; compiler; primitive OS; basic tools. This work and much of its methodology later became the Oberon language and system, also a 2 person job. They also implemented custom HDL's and hardware for it later on. I believe one person, esp of Wirth's or Gutknecht's capacity, could've built all this albeit with a lot more time required. The key was simplicity, layers, understanding each module, and incrementally building them.

Lilith System
http://www.cfbsoftware.com/modula2/Lilith.pdf

Oberon System
http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/eserv/eth:3180/eth-3180-...

Synthesis of Hardware Circuits from Sequential Programs
http://inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/Oberon/286.pdf

The processors
http://oberoncore.ru/_media/library/computersystemdesign.pdf

People like them are the true "full-stack" developers. Apps, OS, circuits... coded it all and integrated it cleanly usually in 2 year periods.
Re Moore's law, the best answer I could get was from Intel via Wikipedia[0] "our cadence today is closer to two and a half years than two." So I wouldn't call that "stopped" but slowed. On the other hand, there are other kinds of advancement that don't really fit into any kind of "law" but might make up for this slowdown, resulting in long term exponential growth, e.g. the transition from CPU to GPU computing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law
Just because that's what Alcor is asking for does not mean that they can actually deliver the service they promise for that amount. Frankly, I don't think any fixed amount is sufficient for a reasonable chance of a positive outcome. A lot can happen in a few hundred years.

If you believe they are honest and competent (which I do), there are factors to consider entirely beyond their control. Even if we assume that there are still humans around to run Alcor, that energy prices haven't skyrocketed, that cryonics haven't been made illegal for some reason, and that some kind of war or natural or man-made disaster hasn't wiped out the facility, there's still a rather high chance that some future management of Alcor will be either dishonest or incompetent and ruin the whole thing. On a 200 year scale, I'd place the odds of that alone above 90%, even if I assume maximally effective present management.

Again, this doesn't have any effect on the present benefits (hope, etc).
Google Instant released Reddit post (2010)
>I was under the impression that some of the syntax for C++ and / or C is a bit ambiguous, which makes it difficult to parse correctly, and to make source code transformations that will absolutely, positively not change the semantics of the code.

That's for naive parsing of C++, like some do for syntax highlighting etc -- not for LLVM's C++ formatter, which uses the AST of the fully blown C++ compiler et al.

If that parser didn't get everything right, then LLVM's C++ output will also be borked, not just the formatter.
Breaking the communication barrier between dolphins and humans
That's not exactly fair. Go implements a runtime, GC, etc. all of which Clojure inherits from the JVM or the JS implementation.
Vanguard's VTSAX is an ETF that buys the whole Stock market (more or less, at least a representative portion). By definition that includes smaller high risk companies.
How do you train a search engine on books? How do you generate relevance metrics (like # of links on the web)?
Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Read it around three years ago and I was never the same since. It is non-fiction, and I think VR is only mentioned in passing, but if you see it anywhere, be sure to pick it up. It was a fun and informative read.
What refugees bring when they run for their lives
In practise I don't find passing function parameters without generics to be very useful.
Ask HN: Where do you keep your medical data?
I'd like to manage and archive my own medical data in better ways than until now. Right now, I have some X-Rays, CT scans, blood tests and medical reports on my harddrive, in my physical document drawer and on my doctor's patient system.

Ideally I'd like to keep all this data (images, medical reports, test results, ct scan data, etc) in an encrypted open source system that I can host on my own computer or server. It should be simple enough for single-patient use but with a good categorization system so that I actually find the stuff I'm looking for.

How do you keep, archive and analyze your medical data?

Some further reading about taking control of your own medical records:

- http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/technology/the-healing-power-of-your-own-medical-data.html
- http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2015/09/ideas-bank/patient-power-will-fix-our-ills
C++: Deleting Destructors and Virtual Operator Delete
It's just a different way of solving a problem. Labelling it a workaround is disingenuous if people are claiming they prefer writing code in that manner.

It's also incorrect to dismiss language complexity as specification complexity. One might just dismiss all of C++'s complexity as specification complexity. It ignores all the difficulties it adds to run-time, compilation (speed, correctness and compiler flexibility), incidental knock-on effects on other language constructs, external tools, syntactic simplicity, learning speed, code consistency and, as the article covers, just being itself a distraction from the real problem.

And if you write code in this manner anyway, the simplicity in the language makes a big difference.

> Also, what's "reasonable" is subjective.

I fully agree.
Intel was slow (delayed) with the Skylake, and poised to get even more delayed in delivering the next series, that jumps to 10nm.

So this "2.5 years" is just the first slowdown -- it gets worse. It's not like we just change 2 to 2.5 and continue for the next 10-20 years.

Probably not even 2 or 3. After 10nm, which is already challenging, you're basically screwed with any kind of process known/used today. And the costs for a fab are into the billions (and get higher with lower sizes), so it's not like small players can even compete in that field.

And that's for multicore -- so unless we also get a way to write more programs to be massively parallel (which lots of algorithms cannot be made) -- we don't get the "free boost" from Moore's law with regards to speed that we used to get.

Not only it's dropped to 2.5 years, but it's also more useless, just giving us more transistors in not readily usable cores.

That's why Intel devotes large part of the CPU to the embedded GPU -- it doesn't have much else to do with it.
>Lewis-Kraus makes the (sadly still common) mistake of assuming that the reader has an identical understanding of what a "drug" is, and that the category of "drugs" is well-defined and discrete. Are LSD and heroin in the same category of thing? Is sugar in this same category?

That sounds like a reasonable assumption about the reader; that they understand how words are used in contemporary English. The answers to your questions are "yes" and "no".

The reader can also be assumed to know that, for instance, vancomycin and doxorubicin are also drugs, but that in this context the word "drug" is being used in a context which excludes them, just as the word "animal" is sometimes used in a context which includes humans and sometimes in one which excludes them.
> In other words "The goal is anti-diversity, with diversity only desirable insofar as it enables the anti-diversity goal."

Meritocracy is not anti-diversity. Meritocracy is correlated with diversity. Choosing meritocracy where they diverge is nothing more than accepting that diversity is not the one true goal of all things.
I think http://cymetica.com does a great job while using different machine learning techniques.
The language around ‘good faith’ and ‘best effort’ seems really dicey. Leaves a lot of room for legal trouble if someone wants to cause it.
"If you're into such things, read on. If not, sorry about that; I heard that three new Javascript libraries were released this week for MVC JSON-based dynamic CSS layout. Everyone's switching! Hurry up to keep up with the cool guys and leave this grumpy compiler engineer to mumble to himself"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passages_(Ravi_Shankar_and_Phi...
Cryonics is another version of Pascal's Wager.

Logic and reason assures that it almost certainly is not going to work, but the value of the potential upside is effectively infinite to that individual, so it still may be a rational investment.
I'd suggest the fault is more with the police than the hospital... If police drop someone off and assert she claims to own a BMW but does not, claims to have a bank job and does not, then the hospital would have to assume she is delusional about those facts and make a diagnosis on that assumption.
What I really liked about Neuromancer looking back, is how many black characters it had. Once of the first sci-fi books I read that had characters I could easily identify with.

Maelcum was pivotal in the entire story and was a cool bad boy type. And you can't forget the whole crew in the "Marcus Garvey" spaceship.

Quality stuff. That right there was enough to make me a lifelong Gibson fan.
>Death panels, anyone?

Can you elaborate on this? Do you have any examples of death panels in countries with socialized medicine? Or at least of the government refusing to pay for medicine?
Thanks. It's unmanned and contemporary, which is closer to the point.

Still, it's designed for construction works, not just as a camera. From http://www.harkand.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Triton_XLX...

"The XLX is particularly suited for heavy-duty construction support, where remote intervention tasks are required such as positioning of subsea structures, pipeline/umbilical connection, pipeline repair, component change-out, valve operation, fluid injection, debris removal, plus many more. To enhance the capability of the XLX, it may be fitted with purpose built tooling skids weighing up to 3000kg (3 Te.) in air."

If we need just a camera, much smaller body is required.
Except you just proved that you're an example of the exact point that the commenter was writing about. LSD and Heroin aren't really in the same category. They have completely different profiles of experience.
Is the video of the play live?
Hmm... the MelaFind thing doesn't sound risk-free to me. If it's approved, there are two ways that could go wrong:

1) Doesn't identify a real cancer (risk is obvious)

2) Falsely identifies a non-cancerous mole as cancerous (exposes patients to unnecessary surgery, which always carries some risk, even with something as minor as a typical mole removal).

In both of those cases there's going to be a specific, identifiable dead or injured patient (or family of same) raising hell, creating a PR black eye for the FDA.

If the software isn't approved, people will probably also die, but they won't be as identifiable, at least not nearly as easily. They likely won't even know.

I'm not saying that this is a good situation ('cause it isn't), but that's how things are. I don't think they're biased against technology, I think they're biased against risk (specifically, risk that might reflect badly on the FDA).
First - and this is the weaker argument - I dispute that the word "drug" is well-defined in contemporary English. For example, in Ocean City, MD, there is literally a drug store which is demarked by a huge - I mean huge - sign that says, in all caps, "DRUGS." Which makes some sense because it's, well, a drug store.

But then, as you get closer, you can see that, in smaller letters above "DRUGS", it also says, "Ocean City says No To" - literally two apparently conflicting definitions of the word on a single sign.

And I don't think this is even slightly uncommon.

Second, and more importantly, by putting LSD and heroin in the same category, the author comes up with a genre of writing he calls "drug books," which appear to me - if the author's reading of the book being reviewed is even accurate - too little in common to be useful.
I think much progress will come in the form of early diagnostics. It's easy to spot developing cancers by looking for free DNA in blood. Cheap and non-invasive.
This is precisely what I mean when I talk about hope. That value is real, and I don't discount it the way most cryonics non-supporters seem to.
Well, we've been "mining" the ocean floor for decades, for oil. This, of course, has the advantage of being liquid so it's pretty easy to extract.

For other stuff, I have no idea whether it's economical yet and it probably isn't (especially since the prices of most commodities are in a slump right now) but the crossover point has got to come some day, so it's reasonable for people to be hanging around waiting for it.
Advertise Listings from AirBnB, 9Flats, VRBO and More
Last time I looked there was no way to limit access - if you have access to one netmap network device you have access to all of them.
> Or changing employee referral networks. When I ask if companies have employee referral networks, most say yes. But if I ask whether they’d have a structure for referrals of underrepresented groups, people often think that’s discriminatory and unfair.

Because it is. You can only remove bias by removing bias, not by introducing counter-bias. Removing names from resumes works, imposing quotas doesn't.

The problem with trying to counter bias with bias is that you can't make a shift on one axis without affecting five others. A bias in favor of e.g. racial minorities exacerbates the bias against everyone else of an underrepresented sex, economic status, religious minority, country of origin, disability, etc. But trying to enumerate all of the underrepresented groups is not only impossible because there are innumerably many of them, it leads to tokenism. Get yourself a couple of employees who each check multiple boxes and the numbers look good even when most of your employees are still white or asian male christian americans from middle class families.

By contrast, the bias in referral networks is the status quo. Hiring the people your existing employees know doesn't make a lack of diversity worse in any direction, it only fails to improve it by making future employees look like current employees. In theory there is an argument that when the status quo is unbalanced, anything that continues the status quo is also unbalanced, but that doesn't actually point to any solution. The status quo is the continuation of the status quo. Figuring out what will make positive change takes more than objecting to things that make no change.

And one way or another you still have to get 'em while they're young.
Rails isn't going anywhere. JS isn't the be all, end all. It's growing and is capable of a lot, but rails is a different beast and you really can't compare them, even if there is some overlap.
Seems mostly right on. I don't think you need to know one language, though. You just need to understand whatever tools you use to model the problem and solution. One can get pretty far by ignoring as much of what's out there as possible, using subsets, and using a consistent style across tools. Let's you get more in your head without mastery of every detail. I still use a Cleanroom-like approach and FSM's with my programs looking similar across toolchains.

re nobody accomplishing any big feat solo

Seems to be a few, potential counterexamples on this list:

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

Bram Cohen's Bittorrent jumps out as having traits of one programmer, a solid technical contribution, and impact. Probably more but must assess if they had help. List is misleading on that part.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/1/1-201#Goodfaith

The term appears about 3000 times in the US Code overall.
Good examples.
Now that's what I call 'meta'! In a discussion about an article about a poem, you are saying that the article isn't actually about the poem but about what the public thinks about the poem...
One thing is to start SOLO when the field or subfield is new and a very different thing when it is mature. Game programming? individuals or small teams developing great games for the Atari 2600, Sinclair X, and Commodore Y but now that's almost impossible. You can follow the indy programming route but requires to ignore some dimension of the finished product.
Multiple cores are useful for virtualization or any collection of programs which each use one core. If the future is one of many cores, we can invest into software architectures that make it easy for parallel processes/VMs to cooperate securely, e.g. message bus.
Is it warranted to feel a little uneasy about the dogmatic advice of "just put all your money in ETFs?" Aren't assumptions that something will always have a fair return the way bubbles are formed?
I like it when things like this happen.

When a new discovery mucks up what was assumed to be established knowledge, it causes a lot of scientists with a stake in either side to push themselves hard to do more research.

Science and society itself benefits.
The Apple Show;big,better and beautiful
ClubHouse is the best product management tool this year
The goal is to get shit done. If diversity enables you to get shit done better than non-diversity, then let's be diverse.

The old great metaphor for America was that it was a "melting pot." The metaphor comes from smelting. When you smelt metal, you're not promoting diversity - you're creating a homogeneous alloy. You also skim off the slag and throw it out.

It's not a particularly pleasant metaphor when you think about it.
Also check out Vale high performance network stack by the same group.

http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/