skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As a programmer and tinkerer (hacker?) I cannot agree more with the sentiment of the article. And what follows is not a direct response to article, which I found surprisingly positive altogether, but more of a general rumination on my own relationship with 'computers' and what I often see happening among my peers as well.

I think it's important not to only see things as a 'computer specialist', especially if that perspective (perhaps rightfully) can lead to pessimism these days.

Throughout my childhood, the main reason why computers excited me was the promise of realizing all the sci-fi stuff I read about and saw on television: tricorders, virtual reality, video communication, voice- and touch-interfaces, zoom-in-and-enhance high-resolution maps, instant access to the knowledge of the world through some kind of AI (all voice-enabled, obviously).

And now, all these things actually exist (to a large degree), and in a device that I carry in my pocket!

The child that I was did not for the most part care about building these tools, or being about the modify and inspect them. He cared about using them. And he's excited about the immense progress in what feels like a very short time.

This adult that I am, meanwhile, has a tendency to instead mostly complain about wifi-issues, siri not picking up on my commands, inability to install flux on my phone, app crashes, the new Google Maps interface, dropped Skype calls, the state of front-end development, and so on.

However justified that may be, I've found that focusing on what that kid wants and overcoming the issues that stand in the way has been a much better motivator than focusing on that adult.

To name a specific example. Based on the articles and discussions here I sometimes feel a bit... sad that I've mostly been working in web development since coming of age. Apparently we're reinventing the wheel badly, javascript is a pretty bad or at best mediocre language, html/css are terrible because they were not intended for app development, npm is a shitty package manager, and so on. Sometimes I even start feeling nostalgic for the good old days by proxy.

But then, when I finish a little journalling/project logging tool that scratches a personal itch, and I can instantly release that to the web and let my brother play around with it, or when I write a little bookmarklet that allows me to fold/unfold/upvote HN comments using the letters on my keyboard, well, then I feel good again.

Because then I remember that not that long ago I wrote a game in Delphi. It required trying to figure out how to so something based on random computer magazines and a single Delphi for Dummies book, it required waiting days for help from some dude in Florida who thankfully was happy to assist me. It required putting the game on a floppy disk and hoping that as it was passed along to my dad and his colleagues, it would somehow get into the hands of others.

That's when I get excited again about working with computers, and the progress we've made. And that's the mindset that makes it easier for me to try and think about ways to get my younger siblings and others as excited about building and tinkering as I am.
Lake mead outside of California is also one of it's largest sources of water. http://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp
> So yes, it would discourage people from going to a new country for fun and lounging around there and not working. People who want to move to a new country should do it because there's a job for them in that new country, and if it doesn't pay above the GBI threshold, then yes, they should probably stay home.

Absolutely not. I've been traveling through many countries over the past >year working remotely on my personal business based at home in the US. Who are you to say I should be tied down in my home country to receive the same benefits everyone else does, especially since I pay taxes like everyone else?

* Sent while on a train traveling through Vietnam
> You are really wasting time hating on Apple and spinning them (i you really are an apple device owner) since Apple is the one who broke open the mobile device so you could run software with out permission (Before you had to get AT&T for Verizons permission to put code on your phone) and who made high quality development tools and platforms available for free.

Where on earth are you getting this nonsense from? You could install unsigned applications without anyone's permission on old systems like S60 ages before the iPhone.
Video and webcam flicker too.
You could translate it as "how dare you trying to sabotage my career by attacking my research", something like this. It is fairly common that researchers build their careers on single results/breakthroughs and those have to be fiercely defended against everyone. For example, by rejecting/delaying research grants/papers that are competing with your own opinion/results, thanks to anonymous peer review. Sounds crazy, but I have seen this more than once.
Hammers and screwdrivers are - I think - pretty mature tools. Still lots of people do not care for DIY and prefer to buy premade or pay someone else to take care of custom solutions.
This might be a strange question, but what does 'scribbling on a pad' actually entail? Do you write the actual code, or is it usually more about drawing out the flow of program?
The Internet Is One Big Grey Pill
Read the entire article.

The upshot is that TX and FL perform very well when demographics are adjusted for; which is to say, it's a much easier job to teach reading to eighth-generation Americans in Iowa or Connecticut than to kids who arrived in the US last week.
So nobody in the bay area that drives a Nissan leaf is forward thinking then either because they are heavily subsidized. Am I correct in understanding your reasoning?

Just because something has a subsidy doesn't mean the supporters are automatically profit hungry morons.
I personally like AWS Lambdas very much and am always looking for interesting use-cases, like this one. I don't quite get what your code is supposed to do yet, but I have some initial comments about the implementation, hope it's ok.

There are two things that glare at me immediately, a) the vendoring of the redis code (including pyc files) and b) the need to define static credentials in the code itself.

There are two little tools I would like to point your attention to, that may ease this pain.

Here is a pybuilder plugin to make deploying lambdas much easier, it can generate a lambda-zip for you (including all dependencies) and upload it to S3 so that you can use it in a CFN template:

https://github.com/ImmobilienScout24/pybuilder_aws_plugin

The second is a tool to configure lambdas, by placing "things" (e.g. redis creds) in the description field of the lambda. This way, you can speparate code and configuration cleanly:

https://github.com/ImmobilienScout24/aws-lambda-configurer
One reason might be for styling. Otherwise you may have to resort to wrapping the label's text in a span or something to target the label's text separately. You wouldn't use the id for styling, just to link the label and the input for accessibility.
Yeah, it still seems down.
Yeah they list a lot of requirements on this page: https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/master/doc...

Oddly I don't see redundancy (error detection or better yet, error correction) in there but it seems to be an important part of human language. They do make an effort to reduce symbols that could easily be confused at least.
Very nice! Could you add Tap Tempo button?
Not quiet the same, of course, but this reminds me of the game Soma, where [SPOILERS!] the protagonist has his brain fully mapped and "uploaded" as part of a treatment, and his scans are used as a template for A.I. research in the future, leading him to be "reborn" a century later in a different body.
A tip for you: please don't use background-attachment:fixed because it forces a repainting and the resultant drop below 60fps does your lib no credit.

If you alter your approach you can still achieve the same effect by making use of

position:fixed

with either

transform:translateZ(0)

or

will-change:transform

to establish a new paint layer and enable hardware acceleration, so scrolling down (a common activity) doesn't drop below 60fps.
It's important to define 10x terms - what businesses care about is productivity and revenue, even if the code/structure/architecture/documentation/whatever isn't top notch.

And there are definitely people that can produce 10x the output and make far more meaningful progress for a company than others.
Walter here. No, I don't know gcc at all.

The frustrating thing about many optimizations is they'll improve some code generation and worsen others, because they all interact with each other. They're like a pharmaceutical - sometimes they cure, but have deleterious side effects. Most of the work in an optimizer is trying to make an optimization work better most of the time and limit the downsides.
Show HN: App Update – Microsoft Emotion API Update
Maybe people think that an 'app' has some intrinsic value whereas a basic demo is just spaghetti.

ps: any source for Alan Kay ads quote ?
really? It's working for me, and I have set uptimerobot to test it and it's reporting everything ok... something weird is going on, but not sure what. Does it produce a 404 / 500 / something else?
Really great job with this. I thought I was going crazy with all the size variations of shirts....
I used it for well over a year, but I noticed I was always disabling it as soon as it turned on. Eventually, I realised that having an accurate, carefully-calibrated display was pointless if I was going to use f.lux.

I tentatively tried using melatonin tablets instead, and I've found it works really well for me. Set an alarm for about 30-40 minutes before you want to go to sleep, take the tablet (sublingually) when the alarm goes off, and you'll notice you start feeling sleepy right about when you need to fall asleep.

Obviously, this kind of exogenous melatonin intake can only crudely approximate the curves for plasma melatonin levels resulting from endogenous production in the presence of zero artificial light, but using f.lux only removes one source of blue light. Sure, you might feel sleepy staring at your screen, but blue light inhibits melatonin synthesis so strongly you could turn on your bedroom light and have your melatonin production bottom out. IIRC, you can significantly attenuate melatonin production with light levels of ~100 lx, which is comparable to a really dim room. Good luck getting ready for bed in complete darkness.

You also need to titrate your dosage to find the right levels. For me, 0.2-0.5mg is all I need to achieve the necessary sleepiness to motivate me to get to sleep. I can take more with no noticeable effects, but I know others who report headaches the morning after. Also note that the older you are, the less melatonin you need.
No, I've never contributed a patch to GCC. No need to look :-)
What an odd mix of meaningful data with meaningless commentary about it.
Thanks a lot! I was looking for ways to separate configuration from code, but couldn't find anything. Similarly "packaging" this so it's easy to share and for other people to use, I couldn't really find any common solution. I'll take a look at your suggestion! Much appreciated.
I would agree with the overall sentiment that people don't want to be programmers, but I don't think it's just a lack of care, I think it's still an intimidation factor that bothers a lot of people. I would instead posit that most people can't even make an informed decision on the matter because they're too scared of computers/programming.

My experience is anecdotal from providing computer support and education over ~10 years, so obviously this should be taken with a grain of salt. But across all age groups and diverse backgrounds, those who aren't into computers seem to be intimidated by them. In trying to teach even the basics of the command line to the technicians I was training, often the biggest factor as to how fast they learned was "are they intimidated by computers?", and even those who fit the stereotype of PC gamer nerds would still freeze up a bit when going through the basics of command line like learning about cd and ls.

It's true that quite a few people probably aren't inclined towards programming - the skills and mindset a good programmer has are fairly unique, much like a good composer or a good artist. It's a very delicate mixture of creativity, technical skill, logical reasoning, knowledge, and of course determination. (This list describes all of the above professions, imo) The issue is whereas it's perfectly acceptable for kids and adults to pick up an instrument or dabble in painting from time to time as a hobby, hobbyist programming just really isn't as readily taken up.

It's why I scoff at articles that call the current generations of kids "tech savvy", since they're anything but. Most are still appliance users, and many can't even do everything the appliance advertises. I don't fault anyone but education systems that don't have strong support and exposure to programming and computers at young ages. It's the same reason that second language acquisition is so poor in the US, merely because people just aren't being exposed to it at an age when they don't have social inhibitions kicking in. The focus of the programs doesn't have to be to produce an army of super programmers, just a class of children that are familiar with the subject matter, as they might be able to recall some fact about ancient egypt or about agriculture.

I don't think we'll have a completely code-savvy populous for a long time; but it wouldn't be hard to have hobbyist programmers become much more common.
very nice. here's mine after 30 minutes of complete immersion.

http://sampulator.com/rhabal/choollax
The “NoFap” Revolution:What Are the Scientific Benefits of Not Masturbating?
Correction, it says: Site not configured
Nice. This still requires an OS X host? Or is it expected to work under eg: Linux too?
A documentary of extraordinary lives of cats in Istanbul, where cats are free
Worked at IBM most of my professional career. Normally do not comment.... cuz... job and whatnot. IBM is pretty big. One downfall is they can't turn on a dime. For IBM to see something new and move on it, means, possibly spending two years on it... which means it won't be the big thing anymore. Or buying something that is hot.... to find out later if its hot and new or a flash in the pan. So yeah, they are behind. What has MicroSoft done lately? Where is Apple without Jobs?
It's called equivocal data. It is known to management circles, it's the part of management that requires experience and judgement rather than facts. Computers can replace decisions based on unequivocal data.
You are most welcome, our code is still really fresh so if you do hit any snags we'd love to hear from you! Any and all feedback is welcome!
It's probably just the weight of tradition from the longhand days that leads people to use the short variable names, not that it's somehow better, even on a computer.

All it would probably take would be for someone to start a math journal that required a minimum of three letter variable names and everyone would switch over.
How to Cover the One Percent
Yes, for now. Although I have also cross compiled the entire iOS toolchain to Linux, even have objective-C code completion in emacs on Ubuntu! That is however another blog post and detail that I haven't written down about.

TL:DR It is possible for Linux as well, but haven't done it yet.
I did a quick search on google patents: https://www.google.com/patents/US9084035 - it uses a combination of AC and DC methods.
Haha, I once got sued by a company claiming I stole code from them, and their lawyer got sent packing when it turned out they had stolen the code from me. (I had a registered copyright on it.)

One thing I absolutely adore about Github is the audit trail about who contributed what and when. It's a solid gold defense, and a way to limit the damage if someone does check in bad code.
The authors have chosen an unfortunate way of expressing themselves, to say the least.

The evident fact is that published data is there for anyone to re-examine as they wish, however I believe that the authors are referring to unpublished data and archived materials.

In the latter case, I would agree that potential users of these resources should not be able to demand access without acknowledging and explicitly collaborating with the "owners" of said resources. A free-for-all access to unpublished data and archived materials would be a recipe for chaos and certainly would result in wasting rare samples and increased pollution of the literature with poorly performed studies. On the other hand, the guardians of these resources should not be able to deny access to said resources by qualified researchers.
Have you tried random forests?
Akamai's giga could speed up the internet by at least two 30%
Tried to make a polyrhythm, but not enough time resolution to get it right:
http://sampulator.com/tr_babb/chuck-it

:\
the fact that you misread this isn't your mistake. it's still a bad name because it's so easy to misread.
Same-ish is not the same. That's like saying Anglo-Saxon and English mean the same thing. The distinction is important because the Persians never used that word to specifically refer to Frenchmen but rather to all western Europeans.
Orthogonal sparse bigrams are another interesting tokenization method, the authors of this paper tested it out against CRM114 with good results:

http://www.siefkes.net/ie/winnow-spam.pdf
Angry Birds Fight Hack 2016 Android iOS No Survey
On Windows as well. Seems to be a general Firefox problem.
I remember hearing last year that we'd need something like 3-4 wet years in a row to counter the many years of drought.

This article is confusing level with flow rate. For Lake Shasta in particular, it looks like we're trending upward faster than the previous average.
that sounds like a webfaction error (where I host the blog), but it usually happens when the domain name doesn't match what they know they're hosting...

Are you using https anywhere or some other type of plugin that might change the URL or proxy your access somehow? (anything that might mess with the Host header somehow).

EDIT: I think I have an idea (could be the webfaction cname + IPv6 - I'll look into it...). Should work now! Sorry about that. Thanks for letting me know!
This reminds me of the last chapter in "The Autistic Brain" by Temple Grandin. She spends a chapter or so describing three different 'types' of people when it comes to way in which they think. Part of the reason she does this is to argue that we should stop (primarily) thinking about 'autism' as a label/deficiency and instead look at the specific strengths and weaknesses of such a mind, and the variations even within autism.

But she also argues that this might be a good way of looking at things in general:

> “Reading an interview with Steve Jobs, I came across this quote: “The thing I love about Pixar is that it’s exactly like the LaserWriter.” What? The most successful animation studio in recent memory is “exactly like” a piece of technology from 1985?

> He explained that when he saw the first page come out of Apple’s LaserWriter—the first laser printer ever—he thought, There’s awesome amounts of technology in this box. He knew what all the technology was, and he knew all the work that went into creating it, and he knew how innovative it was. But he also knew that the public wasn’t going to care about what was inside the box. Only the product was going to matter—the beautiful fonts that he made sure were part of the Apple aesthetic. This was the lesson he applied to Pixar: You can use all sorts of new computer software to create a new kind of animation, but the public isn’t going to care about anything except what’s on the screen.”

> “He was right—obviously. While he didn’t use the terms picture thinker and pattern thinker, that’s what he was talking about. In that moment in 1985, he realized that you needed pattern thinkers to engineer the miracles inside the box and picture thinkers to make what comes out of the box beautiful.”

> “This is where the three ways of thinking—picture, pattern, and word-fact—come in handy.”

> “What all these examples tell me is that in society, the three kinds of minds naturally complement one another. Society puts them together without anybody thinking about it. But what if we did think about it? What if we recognized these categories consciously and tried to make the various pairings work to our advantage?”

While I believe the term 'beautiful' doesn't quite capture what design entails, I do think that the problem you describe might very well have to do with an overabundance of one 'type' of thinking (however in-progress our understanding of these types might be).
Didn't do the homework.

The first thing to know about the California Water Project is that it's designed to store enough water for three dry years. Last year was year four. The last time that happened was 1976-1977. Agricultural water customers have had huge cutbacks in their water deliveries.

Right now, rainfall is more important than reservoir level changes. It takes time for the water to reach the reservoirs. Rainfall so far this year is slightly above average, after four years of below average. This is not enough to recharge the reservoirs; that will take about two wet years. It's also not that important how much is in which reservoir; most of them are connected.

Here's the drought contingency plan updated to February 13, 2016.[1]

Household water isn't a big problem. It's agriculture that's hurting. Especially low-value crops such as rice and alfalfa.

Orange County is already recycling water from their sewerage disposal plant into drinking water. San Jose has that capability with a new plant, but isn't using it for drinking water yet. (But if you take the tour there[2] you can drink some.) San Diego County's desalinization plant opened last December and is now providing about 10% of their water. There's a lot going on to deal with the problem.

[1] http://www.water.ca.gov/waterconditions/docs/2016-DroughtCon...

[2] https://www.eiseverywhere.com/event_calendar.php?accountid=5...
You can code on iOS devices. You can code in many different programming languages on IDEs available directly on the device. The code can be executed, and so programming is not inhibited.

What you are referring to is deployment. You want to be able to deploy or distribute your programs freely through the official channels. And because that is locked down, you consider it "programmable by permission." I would argue that this is not the case.

All I care about is the logic and elegance of programming. I don't care how my program runs — whether I write ARM code that is simulated through some App Store app. Whether I write Lua code that is run through an iOS game engine, or whether I deploy it directly to the hardware. That is immaterial because I still get to enjoy the art of programming.

Apple's phones and tablets are programmable computers and they can be programmed through officially and unofficially distributed apps. Both free and paid, open and closed source. Just because the official distribution model doesn't suit your personal preference does not make these devices any less programmable computers.

Also note that Xcode is free and you can freely deploy apps from Xcode to your devices. So I am not sure I understand your criticism here. Nor do you need to even use the closed-source IDE (Xcode) when the compiler and language are open source.
Reimagining Journalism,Story of the One Percent
> Apple is the one who broke open the mobile device so you could run software with out permission

I was writing apps for my Nokia smartphone before the iPhone was even a project.