skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Don't you find very suspicous that since the past year, we get regularly those stories comming up in reddit, imgur, hacker news, etc ?

Think about it: there are a ton of nice people doing nice things around. Even tech people. But you hear only about Bill.

The Gate Foundation existed for a long time. It actually paid my bills 7 years ago (wasting half of the money before reaching me, BTW), and we didn't have this incredible "yeah, best man ever" crazy minset going around.

It smells a lot like well done PR, with a lot of money behind to give a better image of the man, targetting social networks by subtils channels.

And if you need PR and pays to much for it, you probably DON'T deserve the praises.
The article is about writing, in the higher sense of book authoring, in a second language and the emotional issues related to that. I can't fully identify with it, as the most I've written in my second language are posts and comments like this one.

But there's something to be said about the connection between a language and the culture that shapes and is shaped by it. I believe they form an ensemble, so much so that our emotional response to one is inevitably tied to the other.

For example, I spend more time reading and writing in English than in my native language, which happens to be Italian, even though I live and work in Italy. This has certainly a lot to do with the subject of my education, job and interests (guess what...) but I cannot exclude that it's also based on a certain feeling of "otherness," or alienation, from my country's mainstream culture.

That being said, I do consider contemporary English to be technically superior to Italian in almost all respects. It's easier, more flexible, more expressive, more concise, and more complete. The only exception would be its utter, inexcusable, almost criminal, irregular spelling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography
The abs() trick works for storing one flag bit. But you can store more than one bit if you shift by N bits left and use the LSBs as flag/boolean bits (then circular shift right + mask when reading). You reduce the range of the local variable by a factor of 2 for every bit stored though (same as the abs trick). Tagged pointers use this method, but instead of shifting one can simply set/clear the bits due to implied alignment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagged_pointer
found on GitHub, not tested: https://github.com/cDima/Aerial/
Hello, I'm Neos
But you detach things that are "bad", moving them to the top-level so they get more visibility and still disemboweling any discussions they were part of.

I've seen some stupid moderation policies in my day, and this is definitely up there.
Is the initial comment

"It's surprising that we're seeing so much Chinese influence in our languages."

missing a 'not'?
Laundry files?
RJMetrics Pipeline - https://rjmetrics.com/product/pipeline/

Fivetran - https://www.fivetran.com/integrate

Segment Sources - https://segment.com/sources

Snowplow - https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow/wiki/Setting-up-a-Webho...

(Disclosure: Snowplow co-founder)
I hear voices, or inserted thoughts as I call them. It's like hearing a thought in your head (not an audible voice), but your brain didn't produce it! Like my Mom said who heard a non threatening inserted thought about a month ago "it's like it's coming from a different spot in my brain"

I have written down some of the inserted thoughts I heard. They are from a couple years ago.

http://pastebin.com/FdNGwmRJ
http://pastebin.com/7f4cTkDW
http://pastebin.com/BREdSSGb
http://pastebin.com/VLEPLFzJ
http://pastebin.com/Zy1JbCTC

I'm a member of Intervoice on Facebook. I take Perphenazine, and see a Psychiatrist every 6 months.
No, in many cases the JVM performance will match and sometimes even outperform a C++ implementation in terms of performance and I've seen a few examples of that, although math-heavy operations is usually not one of them. In terms of size and memory usage, a C++ implementation will almost always win.

The problem with Java is that it's not as deterministic in terms of performance as C++, so in areas where that is a must, it has to be taken into account. Even after saying that, the GC can, and indeed should, be tweaked and optimized. The JVM gives you more tweaking options and tools to optimize the garbage collection than any other platform I've worked with, but most developers don't know about them or don't care.

In cases like the original comment mentioned, it may have been better to continue using the C++ implementation, or it might have been useful to spend a bit less in consultants and developers and a bit on Azul's Zing (and maybe a few people that understood the platform). It might have saved a lot in the long term and indeed there are plenty of algorithmic trading solutions written in Java.
Generally the best advice is to conform to the SPOT (Single Point of Truth) rule as much as possible. For example, the place DEFINING users' addresses can be your own database and the data in salesforce is only a REPLICATION of that data. And the DEFINITION of chats is in Intercom and you only have an API for RETRIEVING the data in your own code.

It helps a lot when the "owners" of data are defined that way, because it's easy to reason about the flows. You can then have a set of APIs in your code for accessing (be it the master data/replicated data/live-fetched from an external system).
> This book says that you are envious.

No.
Were having a lot of success with our RTB app being written in Go. All we've done is tune the back pressure on the GC up so we trade off some memory for less GC time.
With attitudes like that, no social, environmental or political change would ever take place.

Sure, we all feel powerless and insignificant sometimes. But don't underestimate the power of the example you set to others. If you inspire one person, your impact has doubled, and so on. And even if you don't, there's something to be said for doing the right thing, even when you know it won't help... simply because it's the right thing to do.

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
Azul isn't THAT expensive. These days it's just x86 software anyway. Financial trading firms are actually one of their top customers, if I understand correctly, and Oracle is developing features for low latency work partly driven by the demands of algorithmic trading shops.
Murder, Rape, GBH, Weapons Dealing, Police Corruption, Financial Crimes (doubt the last one but one can hope).

Pretty much like it is now I think.
Ah, it's funny because your comment made me very clearly imagine Angelina Jolie's face out of the blue. Some famous people are easier to visualize than others (two examples I just experimented: Albert Einstein is easy to picture, while my brain can't decide on Sarah Palin's features). I had to work hard to find the Sarah Palin example: it's been surprisingly easy to imagine celebrities.

Picturing people close to me is way harder. Maybe because I picture the famous people more as "objects" in my brain? Maybe I'm used to see them in still pictures and thus it's easier for me to recall that picture as a cue? Maybe I have so many stimuli associated to people closer to me that my brain can't decide on which one to cue from?

Qualia are so intriguing.
One of my coworkers also experiences aphantasia. We've talked about it many times and it still blows my mind that he doesn't "see" things like I do. However he told me that he does dream like most of us, with vivid images and all.

You might be interested in an exercise called "image streaming"[1]. The idea is to describe an object in extreme detail, as if you were giving someone instructions for how to draw it. Apparently this is one of the few things that allows my coworker to view images in his mind. Also see "backup procedures for people who don't get pictures" [2]

[1] http://www.winwenger.com/imagestr.htm

[2] http://www.winwenger.com/isbackup.htm
And they're also failing to educate their CS grads as well as they should. I think every CS grad should have a firm grasp of programming, and I'd consider a CS grad who doesn't know how to program to have a gaping hole in their education.

This notion of considering programming a "craft" that's below you gets at the attitude problem I think a lot of people (not just pure theoretical computer science graduate students) have towards reading other people's code.
I would suggest researching a bit about "modalities" in NLP. If you have heard of NLP before and it rings alarm bells, forget the magical thinking stuff about NLP ...the interesting beginnings of the project began on some good scientific research in how people imagined things in their mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_systems_%28NL...

In essence, people can think visually, kinetically (feeling), aurally (sound).

Most folks imagine with pictures, but many don't. You are not alone.

For example: I'm sure you can imagine what it felt like when something really funny happened to you, right? And you could probably also remember listening to a song you heard on the radio. Now - recall what it felt like when you were on a beach (or a snowy mountain), and recall what it sounded like. If you cannot remember, imagine the feeling of the sun, sound and imagine the sound you might hear.
Sure, basic chemistry if plants extracted the C from CO2 we would end up with the same O2. However as CO2 levels are rising that is not happening enough.

Of note, the current concentrations are 209 460 ppm of O2 compared with around 380 ppm of CO2. So, it's currently a non issue. But again finite systems are finite.

PS: I only skimmed this as the first Google link: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/O2DroppingFasterThanCO2Rising.php. No idea if it's credable, so feel free to search.
Quite a few of the top HFT firms use Java, almost exclusively.

The trick is to segment your critical path code (whatever is executing the actual trades and is highly susceptible to delays) from any business logic. Then you can focus on making critical path components fast - disable GC completely, keep object allocations way down, audit every line of code, etc. With such a setup you can even do better than typical C++ because you avoid virtually all object allocation/deallocation costs that C++ has. Java object allocation is dirt cheap, it just hurts when you GC, which you can basically avoid or schedule for out of hours. If you want better I would not bother with C++ at all personally, but use C / assembly or even look at FPGA type setups.
True story. Similar start. A couple of enterprise customers, kludgy old code. Changeability was the problem. Decision made for total rewrite. Budget no probs, team of 10 allocated. I was the guy who sold the deals. Wanted to assess if we had a disaster on our hands. Asked CTO to explain how team was constructed. Here is how the conversation went:

Me: tell me about the team

CTO: well it is actually all being built by two guys.

Me: That's crazy. We have a 10 person team.

CTO: Actually I lied, it is actually all being built by one guy. Before you get me fired, let me explain. One guy just builds prototypes to keep all those idiotic requests from management.

Me: I knew the guy. Fastest damn developer on the planet

CTO: we just throw his code away. The other guy who we don't let you meet actually writes the code that works. You see nothing for weeks, then it emerges and works beautifully.

Me: what do you do with the other 8 guys?

CTO: give them make work to keep them out of the way.

The system was a market success for a long time.
Redis uses fork to save to disk.
> Haskell doesn't quite have a distinction between reference and value types, [...]

Perhaps difference between normal values, and values wrapped in eg IORef counts?
UK 'a tax haven for multinationals' (2014)
> Thanks to smartphones, people are already familiar with the modern concept of the standalone app; why not just make downloading an OS-native binary as easy as typing in a web address, on every OS?

Congratulations, you've invented ActiveX.
Speaks volumes why Obama wants the UK to remain in the EU. His corporate handlers know that it is inevitable that taxes will increase if there is a Brexit.
That begs another question - if you are doing something althletic (or even soemthing simple like driving a car), do you develop "muscle memory" the same as other people, or do you need to actually think through each motion you perform?
It does seem to run straight into the 'harmful interference' part of part 15.

I've seen people in previous discussions (mostly around the 'rogue ap containment' feature of some wireless access points) try to argue that only 'dumb' broadband jammers fall afoul of the limitations on jammers, and that 'smart' or protocol aware jammers wouldn't. I don't agree, and based on the ruling against the conference centre that was abusing the AP containment feature of their wifi AP's to block other peoples wifi signals, I'm guessing that the FCC doesn't think so either.
Does fork on windows actually block parent for a long time, or does it only delay the child? I thought it was the latter, which shouldn't affect Redis. (but I may be wrong)
The Case for SoundCloud
I certainly respect people who work hard to achieve expert status in any (worthwhile) domain.

Some people are just driven that way.
Unfriendly Climate
So you cannot visualize things while trying to but do you dream at night ?

About psychedelic drugs, it's not something I would advocate lightly as it has the potential to mess you up pretty badly. From my limited experience it was more like having my imagination on steroids so I wouldn't know what happens if there's nothing to enhance in the first place... That said I've never taken hardcore stuff like lsd or dmt where some people report having full visual hallucinations.
They shaped, nurtured, and inspired me, and continue to do so.
I get the same when I click Read the Full Article
I take it from the article that this would solve one of my biggest internal issues: songs getting stuck in my head. It's gotten so bad in recent years that I don't listen to music at all, because it may stimulate a "earwig" that will not stop.
It would be a fun project to take the wikidumps, extract the data and put it into something more like what you are talking about in that blog post, be a fairly massive task to do completely though.
Tourism means also money...

anyway the tech scene is not big... there is the WordCamp https://2016.torino.wordcamp.org/ and the Politecnico http://www.polito.it/ with some startups http://www.i3p.it/

but not much work...
The stuff that makes up the sun also also older than the sun..
CSI: SEC sounds like a thrill a minute.
You can write Java code to skip GC and manage memory by yourself. Like C++
http://www.mkyong.com/java/java-write-directly-to-memory/
Requiring that a third party "explain it to the carpenter" is a big part of the problem. Our coddled carpenter inevitably shrivels up in bewilderment and frustration when confronted with a new (actually, a century old...) concept, and proclaims the teacher an "elitist," "savant," or "misguided reductionist."

Sometimes the coddled carpenter has trouble grasping a new (actually, a century old...) concept, throws up arms in bewilderment and frustration, and proclaims the concept "too abstract, too complicated" and therefore unsuitable for all. For example, deciding that the value for pi is just too mind-bendy, and deciding on a nice happy value of "22/7" instead.

Computer programming (and theoretical computer science, quantum computing, type theory, etc.) is fundamentally intertwined with the mathematical laws that describe our known universe. There will always be parts of it that seem esoteric to someone, and I bet you that even developers extremely confident in their world of playdough tools would writhe and gnash teeth when reviewing some of the fundamental elements that make their coziness possible. The most obvious example of this might be the parser for their favorite programming language - it is a very complex subject and the algorithms are formidable.

There appears to have been a massive culture shift (rift?) somewhat recently - from individuals who take pride in understanding and growing what we know and what we can do with computers, to individuals who demoralize, coddle, and impede what we can do with them.
That's one of the FAQ's in the piece:

8. Do you dream?
No, or I don’t recall them. I’ve had a couple dreams but there was no visual or sensory component to them. When I woke up, I just knew a list of “plot points” about things that happened. This is also how I digest fiction.
I agree. It has a very click-baity title though. From my experience GC is usually very fast, except when the program runs out of memory or over allocates all the time due to bad programming.
My wife has multiple sclerosis. Aphantasia is one of the complications she's experiencing. Without being able to visualize she's had to resort to using a notepad and paper to write everything down. She's always been creative and it's been very hard on her to come down with this.
I've read a ton of such blog posts recently in exploring this subject - seems like the tradition is as soon as you believe you understand the monad you must immediately write a blog post explaining it and pointing out why everyone else's metaphor is too complicated.

This one is kind of nice in its succinctness, but that ends up meaning it doesn't explain why I should care or what I would do with my monad once I have grokked it.

I've yet to write my personal "how I grokked my monad and why everyone else is wrong" post, but I suspect that there's probably a sweet spot somewhere between 'monad is simply a monoid in the category of endofunctors' and a 'plain English' translation of the monad laws with no context. Preferably with an explanation of why I would want or need such a thing up front. Preferably without Haskell notation.

That said, such an intro would probably still be pretty hard going, some things are just hard, or at least difficult to understand without context. I said I've been reading lots of these recently, actually I've been reading them for a couple of years, but I've only been understanding them recently because I've bumped into a problem domain for which the solution I was groping for in the dark turned out to be a monad.

Swift wise, I found the following to be very enlightening

http://alisoftware.github.io/swift/2015/10/17/lets-talk-abou...

http://alisoftware.github.io/swift/async/error/2016/02/06/as...

http://khanlou.com/2015/09/what-the-heck-is-a-monad/

http://www.javiersoto.me/post/106875422394

http://chris.eidhof.nl/post/json-parsing-in-swift/
I would describe my ability to visualize as almost exactly like that in the article. I can't answer these questions directly, but I can tell you that when I am falling asleep there is a 'switch' that turns on in my brain and all of a sudden whatever I'm thinking about will appear before me in full detail, color, texture as if I were viewing an image of it. The sudden change has been enough to wake me up at times, otherwise I probably just forget about it as I drift asleep.

Similarly for sounds, except that I can always imagine sounds. However I can only imagine sounds that I can try to 'subvocalize' with my own voice (plus humming, whistling, etc.). When on the verge of sleep I will hear gorgeous, fully orchestrated (as far as I can tell) songs. Sometimes memories of ones I know well, sometimes either something I don't recognize or am subconciously improvising. It's extremely alluring and makes me annoyed that I can't do this at command. (Though friends who always have a tune of music in their heads tells me it gets annoying too.)

Number 8 makes me think the author is even more extreme than I in aphantasia.
This is about algorithms over immutable or persistent data structures, not about algorithms operating on functions, a common and unfortunate misnaming.

Ocaml is functional but allows arbitrary state mutations. On the other hand it is typically very straightforward to implement persistent data structures in a non-functional language with GC support.
This particular article isn't even about a Java problem. The author is just trying to use more memory than is actually available.

If the program is written in C++ instead, what'd happen is it'd keep allocating memory beyond the 4 gig limit she imposed on the JVM, until it hit swap and the entire machine bogged down and became slow, or until the kernel OOM killer randomly killed some other (possibly important) program on her desktop to try and make space for it.

If she tried to fix that with ulimit, then she'd get different behaviour - the program would die quickly without slowdown, but before actually using 4 gigabytes of heap, due to fragmentation.

In the latest Java release there's a flag that makes the JVM exit as soon as there's an OutOfMemoryError (or do a heap dump for diagnostics), and there's also -XX:+UseGCOverheadLimit which makes the JVM give up sooner if it's spending more than 98% of its time garbage collecting (i.e. it's reached the limit of its heap but not quite).
> I do have the ‘milk voice’—that flat, inner monologue that has no texture or sound

Sorry to tell you this, but my inner monologue does have texture and sound :P It sounds pretty close to my voice (or how I imagine my voice, I guess) and my inflections when speaking (even across languages). Even when I read other people's writings, I kinda hear myself in my mind.

> However, most of my friends and family describe what they “hear” as music—not as vivid as the real thing, to be sure, and not as many instruments—but “music” nonetheless.

That reminds me of an anecdote with my older brother: I was very young and I remember telling him I could hear music in my mind when I wanted to, just like if I pressed PLAY on a cassette player. He looked at me like I was crazy (note to self: test if he's aphantasic).

I still can, and (I think) I can reproduce it in high polyphonic detail (even details I don't consciously remember!) I perceive my aural imagination (aurination? audination?) as vivid as the real thing (though real sound kind of "overpowers" my imagination, like my imagination was playing through earphones close to my ears, not quite plugged in, but inside my head!) It's much clearer than my visual imagination, which is more blurry and fleeting.

Maybe that's why I became an amateur musician :)
Gorilla's Pet: Koko Mourns Kitten's Death
Most pen testers I know wouldn't have the first clue about internetworking beyond what they learned from some Wireshark video tutorial
Absolutely agree. Haven't read the english translation, but the original version was one of my favourite read last year. It is a short book (about 150pages I believe) and very skillfully written. It is very clinical, but in the same way Lovecraft is clinical in his descriptions of the the unnameable. It ends up giving a chilly insight on a deeply tormented man, who had trouble adjusting to modern society in all its horror and prurience!
"Why Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Stock Skyrocketed Today":

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/22/why-advance...
:%s/obstacle/target
How Big Data Creates False Confidence
Policy wise, this comment is a blatant violation of [[WP:COI]] and [[WP:SPAM]].

Substantially, I am so glad that Wikipedia is governed by the community. Otherwise, it would be a matter of time until some young, bright and dynamic manager decided to implement a subset of the "improvements" you propose - with a disastrous effect.
Fb-bot-boilarplate-java
I had to solve stop-the-world pauses that were causing occasional intolerable lag spikes in a multiplayer game. The solution was to switch to Java's G1 GC, and also to deadpool and reuse every object and byte array I possibly could.