skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Although I try to be careful with analogies, I do think this is an excellent one, largely because it can help explain why coding can be seen as simultaneously easy and extremely difficult.

I remember reading an interview with Andre 3000 a while back about how he composed "Hey Ya!". It turned out (this is all from memory) that the reason he used the chord pattern he chose was because he was relatively new to the guitar and those were the chords he knew. So in short, Andre 3000 was able to take very limited knowledge of a new instrument and produce something very compelling and interesting. However, this was certainly after a lifetime of building an interest in and understanding of music.

Shortly after reading that interview, I was hanging out in a music store, and a guy was amazing everyone with his acoustic guitar ability. He did some very cool stuff with his fingers while hitting a harmonic and going back down the neck, at a rapid pace, without faltering even slightly. He was available for lessons and corporate events.

Truth is, it actually is possible to do something very interesting with programming with relatively little experience, though you do need to be a creative and technically minded person. At the same time, you know, nobody would have hired Andre 3000 as a session musician. Sometimes I think that those coding tests, where you have to find the least common ancestor of two nodes in a binary tree, handle tricky threading issues while avoiding deadlock or race conditions, or doing complex outer joins, are really done by companies looking for the equivalent of a session musician. They're not saying you aren't creative or incapable of writing novel and useful software if you don't pass. They just can't add you to a band, at least not yet.

Lastly, I am increasingly in agreement with the last paragraph, which is that our "profession" does need to take initiative in determining how basic competence is established.

"If the main point of a professional qualification is filter out people who can’t code, does it really matter if what is being tested for is out of date, or irrelevant to current industry practices? Maybe our tentative qualification would involve the completion of a reasonably serious program in LISP?"

This is insightful. I've been very ambivalent about it, because I am scared of what happens through regulatory capture. But at this point, I do sometimes wish there were an industry-wide, well recognized exam that covered the paces that you go through when you interview at google, amazon, and small companies that are copying them. I've read/heard people say that they'd happily take such an exam formally if it meant they wouldn't have to re-take this exam, in a more capricious way, every time they apply for a new job.
It really kinda is.

In the Ilya Sutskever Talking Machines podcast[1] he describes exactly how it is "magic". He talks about how there is no theoretical basis to think that a deep neural network should converge, and prior to around 2006 the accepted wisdom was that networks deep enough to outperform other methods of machine learning were useless because they couldn't be trained.

And then they discovered how to initialize the random starting values in such a way that they do converge - for reasons no one really understands.

I've heard a lot of people claim there is no magic, but I tend to think Sutskever[2] knows a little bit more than most people about deep neural networks.

[1] http://www.thetalkingmachines.com/blog/2015/1/15/machine-lea...

[2] http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ilya/
Yea as much as I'd love a new psychonauts game, I have some trust issues after kickstarting some money to Broken Age.
Yeah, except many (most in my area) healthcare providers do not have fixed rates for service, and prices that are offered are often just estimates, with no real recourse if the estimate is off by a wide margin.

My wife had elective surgery- I had a high deductible plan at the time with an HSA account. When we asked what the total cost would be, the quote was ~$1100. The total bills that came to us were well over three times that. There is no real recourse for this, we wrote letters, called governing agencies in our area and were nearly sent to collections before I just paid for it.

Free market capitalism is far from what we have in almost every service-based industry in my experience, and companies fight tooth and nail to ensure it stays that way.
>The very notion of generalization to unobserved data is not well understood (I like D. Wolpert papers on that topic).

Which papers?
We have the same problem with Verizon in my Pennsylvania town. The copper wire is in such bad shape that it barely works for voice. We tried to use DSL, but our connection dropped whenever it rained. A technician told us it might be months before they could get a truck out. Customer service told us there was nothing wrong with our service. So we swallowed our pride and went back to Comcast, which chortled and said "we knew you'd come crawling back" while twirling its moustache.
Of course he knows he could work as a developer. It is just good old humblebragging.
I think that's just a side effect. I don't think terrorists actually care that much about western society. They want to ultimately defeat the west at least ideologically, if not economically and ultimately militarily (in order they can further their own goals)

So it's beside the point to them. Let's say someone wants your money, so in fear, you stop spending your money, stop bringing your wallet with you, the thief doesn't care about that, what they want is to take your money, ultimately.
The guy that wrote the article talks about doing "research" in one breath and then telling the judge something he heard from Law & Order in the next. I'm assuming people like him are the reason for the "no outside research" rule.
I was a Math/Econ double major with a minor in applied statistics. I did the finance path for 6 years before choosing to go back and do a boot camp. I've done very well since then, although it's likely due to my educational background. None of this describes the average student, but I think my case reinforces your point about opportunities. If the program didn't exist, I'd still be trading equities and contributing very little to society.
There was a paper published about exactly this, summarized by Jeff Atwood [1]. Essentially, there appears, according to the authors, that there is a mindset that people either have or don't have that allows them to understand the very basics (variable assignment, iteration, etc) before they've had any training at all. Students were tested before 3 weeks of education and after and the results were essentially the same: the ones that got it in the beginning were the same ones that got it at the end.

This supports the original article in one way by saying that it's not for everyone and bootcamps for the general public are not going to help much, but it contradicts the secondary point which is that we should be convincing potential doctors and lawyers to start learning CS. Programming aptitude doesn't start with intelligence or background, rather from something innate.

[1] http://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-fr...
Which still doesn't explain precisely what sort of statistical inference BNNs are performing.
Of course not. There isn't really a programming equivalent though. I guess you could memorise the syntax for one specific, complicated program and you're right, that wouldn't make you a programmer.
well, it's a gradient, and the only way to move up is years of practice.

i liken it to any skilled trade. you can probably fix your kitchen table or change the brake rotor on your car but you're probably not qualified to work at a bespoke furniture shop or the porsche dealership - but you could be, if you really tried, or if you got lucky. and if you did get lucky, you could probably figure it out with some help.

some people just can't do these things, no matter how hard they try. they simply don't possess the aptitude, or iq, or whatever you want to call it. maybe just plain old discipline.

the interesting thing about programming to me is it's easy to lose - i'm totally unqualified to do anything serious these days because for the past 5 years i've spent most of my time running a business and doing 'housekeeping' technical (sysadmin, very light dev, some ops stuff) tasks that i don't want my senior devs to do.
Cisco extends SDN for VMware integration, Docker containers
I do not know the internal workings of the FBI but am willing to believe that they are on point enough that such a warning either didn't particularly stand out from others or that it did not get looked at due to a shortage of resources.
It highly depends on the dance, its age and its history. Ballroom dancing, for example, has notation for various elements of movement. Here[1] you can find examples. If you check them out, you'll see a fair bit of complexity. Overall, ballroom dancing is even more complicated than that and it's difficult if not impossible to come up with a good notation that would describe most of the movement. For social dancing or for the lower levels, maybe, but once you start talking about the various different elements of foot placement, leg action, body action and 3D movement, it becomes almost useless to think of it in terms of dense notation.

There are many layers of complexity here, perhaps not all too different in nature from the layers of complexity when dealing with computers and software. In dancing, the goal is usually to start somewhere in the middle and make your way up towards more abstract ways of thinking about it and also down towards more fine technical detail.

[1]: https://www.worlddancesport.org/WDSF/Academy/Technique_Books
From my point of view, I find your statement bizarre.

Universal Apps : Native :: Responsive Design : Web

Creating separate applications for mobile and desktop is analogous to the old-fashioned approach of creating a web site for desktop consumers and an entirely separate site for mobile users. Thankfully, with the advent of what we now call "responsive design" (which is admittedly poorly named; should have been "adaptive"), we no longer need to create two separate apps, but instead can tune the singular application's user interface to adapt to screen size.

Universal Apps work the same way, they adapt to screen size. And with the nearly continuous spectrum of screen sizes from phones to phablets to small tablets to large tablets to small desktop displays to large desktop displays, there's a great upside to using such an approach.

Have you seen how the new Outlook app adapts to the a full-size display using Continuum? It's pretty awesome.

Frankly, I'm not really sure why you wouldn't use that approach.

That said, I agree the app store model needs to be reconsidered by everyone.
Autoimmune diseases like Lupus trigger something similar.
Securely Serving from GitHub Pages Using CloudFlare
Yeah, sure. Go for it.
Important people would lose money is why.
> more practicality in CS curriculum

Rename it to SE first and stop pretending it's a "science". Or, alternatively, accept that it's really a science and stop moaning about the careers in the industry. There'll be a lot to moan around the grants, post-doc positions, publish or perish and all the other funny parts of an academic career.
One of the brothers was interviewed by the FBI but you can't arrest someone until they commit a crime.
The vast majority of adults can't read English well? Let's get real here, that's not even close to the truth.
Possibly also of interest: Recursive Neural Networks Can Learn Logical Semantics[1]

Probably not as theoretical as the work you referenced, but interesting to me because of the deeply practical outcomes in NLP.

[1] http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W/W15/W15-40.pdf#page=22
Perhaps we need to stress a bit more practicality in CS curriculum?

No, we need to stop telling people who want a career in web development to get a degree in Computer Science. And universities should stop convincing people who really want to be software engineers to study computer science. If you want to work as a structural engineer you'll probably get a degree in structural or mechanical engineering. You don't get a degree in theoretical physics and complain that since structural engineering is just a practical application of theoretical physics your physics curriculum really should be more focused on practical engineering.
Hailo is actually available in Barcelona (as well as Madrid), and it deos basically work as you describe. However, your issues sound very similar to how it was in Dublin but they started expanding further and now they cover the entire county and they're pretty damn good. There's even competitors over here (Lynk is one I think), which is usually a great sign.
Yes, even if they're not going to become programmers, coding teaches people two important skills that I see lacking:

- The ability to break up large, seemingly daunting problems into smaller manageable chunks.

- The ability to shift perspectives from the 50,000 foot view, down to the individual line of code view, and then back up to the 50,000 foot view, and then back down again!

Variances in individuals abilities can be accounted for - jack might only be mentally capable of going to the line of code level, but I can see Mary is getting bored, so she can look at the interpreter source code - they should be encouraged to seek answers themselves.

I have a close friend who is the head master of a school here in the UK, and he is really keen to get kids coding, but there's no source materials for the teachers to learn, I think there's opportunity there for anyone who wants to pick it up :)
For the most part I would say I agree with you. I'd say if devices can enhance an experience it's more than likely a constructive use of technology. When devices remove you from the experience altogether I'd say it's a destructive use of technology. So what is lost in the above example? Simply the fact that audio is not echoing off of the walls in the venue. I can see why some people would find that to be a problem, but how sound is delivered to the audience's ears is not a huge difference IMO. Especially when that audience is just sitting at the show and is not expected to participate anyways.

But keep in mind that's not really the point. The thread has to do with ways to protect a comedian's content (especially live shows) from piracy. The point of the article was to show an example of how technology can be used to help protect a comedian's (or perhaps other performers') live shows.

Performers can spend their entire lives building up the skills they use to put on 5 minute, 15 minute, 30 minute, etc. shows. How else can a performer recoup that time invested if they can't expect to perform the routine many times and be paid each time? The issue with piracy of live shows is many (perhaps most) people will no longer be interested in paying to see a show they've already seen for free online. Or at the very least they'll be disappointed because they've seen exactly the same act before online for free.
My conclusion is that merging genes is essentially rolling the dice, and all you can do is try to stack the odds in your favour. There are a great many unfortunate genetic outcomes when it comes to breeding, and you can reduce the chances of many of them by reducing the level of incest in your breeding.

I bet you already knew this is what I meant and didn't actually need me to spell it out for you. As an aside, I read elsewhere that you and your wife are both from Western Europe. That's actually a lot closer than I had in mind; I said breed with someone who really doesn't look like you. :)
> A) Storing cash: I hate having to carry cash around just to pay for a ride home.

I don't understand. Honest question: why is that necessary in the first place? I don't remember time when I needed to use cash for paying for a cab ride in any western country.
This new web browser made me give up Chrome
Mostly for dance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benesh_Movement_Notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labanotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eshkol-Wachman_movement_notati...

For sign language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SignWriting

Those systems, designed for different purposes, lack essential elements necessary for martial arts movements, like weight distribution, facing, weapons, footing, and opponents. You would probably have better luck examining the code for mocapped animations, particularly for 3-D fighting games and movies.

But you'll have to come up with your own abstraction. There are just too many degrees of freedom in a human body to have a one-size-fits-all kinetography system that is also easy to read and write. That's probably why some martial art systems have so many names for positions and movements. The periodic table for atomic martial art movements is huge, especially now that MMA has spurred so much cross-disciplinary study.
Assuming you meant NYC, the problem for Hailo/Mytaxi/etc is that yellow cabs are only allowed to pickup street hails and can not be dispatched to you directly. So unless such regulations are loosened, these apps just won't work.
I agree. Which is what could be happening with companies like zenfit. http://uk.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-refutes-the-naysa...

I can't possibly believe that with so many new hires the quality doesn't go down. And with the quality of the hires, also the product quality will inevitably go down.
I think a start would be to have a truly impartial legal consultation system that jurors could avail themselves of at any point. The responses would be given with a minimum of contextual information about the case necessary to answer the question.

In practice, the judge is supposed to serve this role, no? But I think it's readily apparent from the variances in judge activism that judges are people too. In hearing all the details about the case they can't help but form an opinion and are in a position to act on that opinion to varying degrees should they so choose.
Neuroscientists reveal how the brain can enhance connections
Random dude who learns basic scripting says he's not good enough to be a software dev -> people chime in disagreement.

But, try to actually take them up on the offer and you'll probably find yourself jumping through programming interviews that will scoff at your basic skills.

Most of us got started writing little scripts. It's definitely a great start. To say that he could work as a professional programmer now is ridiculous. Could he have a career if he put in the time? Maybe. Can he get a job? Maybe. But, it's not the slam dunk these people are suggesting.

Note that I'm not even differentiating getting past interviews vs actually doing the work. I think either would be a stretch from writing a few scripts.
My employer blocks this blog as well. Not sure if they just decided to block *.netflix.com or what.
I feel like this should be true, but in my experience it hasn't been. We've hired interns who become full-time at some point, both CS grads and bootcampers.

As a note, the bootcampers we've hired have been people with a little bit of programming experience (not a ton, generally they did it as part of a previous job) that wanted to switch careers. The ones we've hired have been around 24/25, with about a year of experience in a different field like chemistry or geology.

The CS interns were college kids, so it could just be a function of maturity. I think of the ones we've brought in for internships, 2 were hirable (we've brought in maybe a dozen or so over the last couple of years). One of the 2 hirables is someone who I think will have a great career over the long run.

The bootcampers we've hired (thus far two) have been a measure above the CS kids. The CS kids have had a level of entitlement that I think is hindering them. It feels like because they've gotten a job they're set and they don't really need to learn more, when they have a long road to go down. This has been a pretty typical pattern and it didn't feel like they had the will to push themselves despite the fact that many seemed like they were very intelligent.

The bootcampers were older so they seemed to have that will and curiosity, none of them took the job for granted. One of them seemed to be falling behind, he was told that, and spent a lot of time outside of work learning the things he didn't know and has been great.

I understand anecdotes can only be taken so far, but just a couple of observations I felt like sharing.
I hate the hype about coding. It's not for everybody. I only code when i need to solve complex problems or design a product for money or my use.
The Fortess programming language [1] was a Fortran successor (with a bit of APL influence) that was meant from the beginning to be seen through a "syntactic stylesheet", so that one would see and operate at the level of mathematical operations and not with the ASCII source code. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_%28programming_langua...
[2] https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/first-impressions-...
your responsible for the taxes but money is held back in form your check so you don't owe a bunch at the end of the year. in fact if it's off to much you can owe a penalty.
I think gabemart threw in "small javascript web application" as an example of a job where you don't need to know how to code, where you can get by copying & pasting from Stack Overflow.

A more interesting example is his "pacemaker embedded software" example. There's actually not very much software in a pacemaker. So that's an example of a field where engineering, process, testing & reliability skills are much more important than the ability to actually code.
The coding in something like a pacemaker is usually done by an electrical engineer. A good EE may not be a good coder, but they should have the other skills you mentioned.
It seems like this would get backlash from audience members quickly and eventually filter who goes to your shows. Y

ou're practically asking them to voluntarily allow them to detain your phone.

I'd also hate to see how the audience reacts if the case ever fails to unlock.

And what about Apple Watches and Smart Watches, it will eventually be difficult to police.

'I might need it in case the sitter calls' or
'I need it for emergencies'
Now that people aren't forced to use Verizon's network for telecom service, Verizon shouldn't have to maintain the networks any longer.

Half of people don't have a landline--growing each year. Among those, many get their service via cable companies or VOIP. In 10 years there might not be any need for a functional landline telephone system.

And since the cost of such a system is mostly fixed, not variable, the less people use it, the more it costs per customer. Which only drives the cost up.

Only a fool would spend good money updating this stuff.
The software development aspect that you describe cannot be taught at a boot camp. I think the people claiming you can learn to code in a day mean (or think they mean) the coding part, and probably don't realise there's all that other stuff on top of it.

I would like to emphasise the last point you made. The coding skills, while broadly similar, are still different in each of those specialisms. Learning how to write effective code for a pacemaker is very different from writing a Ruby on Rails web app. They're both "coding" and you need the same kind of abstract thought, but you need to understand very different things to be good at them.