skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hello Mr. Kay, Are you still going to be active with VRI or CDG now that HARC! has formed?

PS:

I once ran into you in Westwood and you invited me to check out the CDG lab. Unfortunately I missed you when I came by. I'm always tempted to try again, but I'd hate to interrupt the serious thinking of the fellows stationed up there.
What is your opinion on Operating Systems research and industry? I find the Linux monoculture tiresome.
I really know nothing about this line of research AT ALL. It's all quite interesting, thanks for linking to it.

Now, the general rule of thumb for drugs is there's no such thing as a free lunch, what are the possible negative outcomes of supplementing those kinases and AMPK substrates? Because obviously their effects wouldn't be limited to influencing the neurotransmitter system exclusively.
All of this is wrong. Numpy does not depend on fortran code and TF and theano implement their arithmetic without fortran code.
Hi Alan,

what do you think about interactive theorem proving (ITP)? Assuming that you are aware of it, is it something that you have tried? If yes, how was your experience, and which system did you try? If no, why not? What do you think about ITP's role in the grander scheme of things?
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What if that takes several decades? What if that turns out to be a lot harder than we thought. Supposedly can take a lot longer than you expect.

If you had asked scientist how long it would take to cure cancer in the early 1970's, I'm sure they'd have guess 50 years would have been more than enough time.
Almost no one who actually works or has done serious research in ML is genuinely concerned about "malevolent AI". We are so, so, so far away from anything remotely close to that. Please stop trying to gin up fear and listen to the experts, who uniformly agree that this is not something to be concerned about.
I too think maven (from 2.0 onwards anyways) is awesome.

It's also declarative, BTW, which is a big improvement over Ant.

Maybe somebody should re-skin maven with a yaml based front end to attract the hipsters?
"23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health"
https://youtu.be/aUaInS6HIGo
Actually, if you go to https://tryappservice.azure.com and create a temporary (free, login required, no registration, etc.) web app, you can edit it in real time with Monaco.

You can do that in Go, NodeJS, Python... Etc.
This is a tough question. (And always has been in a sense, because every era has had projects where the tool building has sunk the project into a black hole.)

It really helped at Parc to work with real geniuses like Chuck Thacker and Dan Ingalls (and quite a few more). There is a very thin boundary between making the 2nd order work vs getting wiped out by the effort.

Another perspective on this is to think about "not getting caught by dependencies" -- what if there were really good independent module systems -- perhaps aided by hardware -- that allowed both worlds to work together (so one doesn't get buried under "useful patches", etc.)

One of my favorite things to watch at Parc was how well Dan Ingalls was able to bootstrap a new system out of an old one by really using what objects are good for, and especially where the new system was even much better at facilitating the next bootstrap.

I'm not a big Unix fan -- it was too late on the scene for the level of ideas that it had -- but if you take the cultural history it came from, there were several things they tried to do that were admirable -- including really having a tiny kernel and using Unix processes for all systems building (this was a very useful version of "OOP" -- you just couldn't have small objects because of the way processes were implemented). It was quite sad to see how this pretty nice mix and match approach gradually decayed into huge loads and dependencies. Part of this was that the rather good idea of parsing non-command messages in each process -- we used this in the first Smalltalk at Parc -- became much too ad hoc because there was not a strong attempt to intertwine a real language around the message structures (this very same thing happened with http -- just think of what this could have been if anyone had been noticing ...)
Alan,

What do you think will be the impact of Cognitive Computing, and AI on the way software will be built in the next 5 years.

Do you think AI may automate fully some jobs, or part of the jobs people do today in IT & Software Development?

If so what do you think is the best approach professionals should take?

Thanks in advance for the answer, and thanks for doing this AMA.

Joseph
I don't understand why Docker for Mac is a GUI application. I'd rather get the same features from the CLI.
And 10ish countries
That is the mantra, but there is debate. Exercise puts the onus on the individual. So it's a great cop out for other problems. It's not the extra sugar they are seeking into our diets, it that's we don't exercise. I remember one pitiful interview with a MacDonald's rep who claimed that their food was healthy so long as customers exercised well enough. That's too much of an easy, cheap, answer.

Imho the days of answering every health problem with exercise alone should end. We must acknowledge the approach has failed and we need to deal with the wider environment impacting individual choice. That means healthier foods, but I'd support tax deductions (preferably credits) for exercise-related costs. Make the money back with a tax on unhealthy foods/things, as we did with cigarettes.
Well, should such a pill be created, if the time required to generate money for the pills is less than the time required to exercise at an equivalent level... I mean, heck, I don't think it's at all likely I'll exercise beyond a certain level, but take a pill and poof?
It uses Electron as a shell, so "yes"
Kubernetes has persistent volumes: http://kubernetes.io/docs/user-guide/persistent-volumes/

You can use something like Glusterfs and distribute your files or it can hook in to your clod provider and create persistent storage automatically on something like EBS.
That I can agree with, but I still feel like there is a reasonable line to be drawn between application containerization and coordination and load-balancing of networked services.
I wonder if RStudio can switch to this. Probably will never happen :(
it's good to see Yodlee have some competition, hopefully they can choose to compete as well.
I totally agree. I've noticed this in my own reading pattern - when I'm linked to an on-line article, I first skim it very fast to identify if there's even anything worth reading in it, and if I determine that there might be, I go back to beginning and start reading.

It's a pattern born from experience - I've wasted way too much time reading through articles only to discover half-way that they could (and should) be summarized in a Tweet.
They collaborate together at YCR / HARC!
I've said it before - leveraging "restrict" is far from trivial.

In practice, what you do is look at the assembly of your inner loops, scratch your head, and try putting "restrict" in various places that seem like they'd make sense, and then look at the assembly of your inner loop. Which requires building a mental model of what the assembly of your inner loops ought to look like, and then actually looking at it, and then running it to see if your idea of what the assembly out to look like was actually a good one.

If your expertise is in numerical methods first and assembly-level optimization second (or, like, nth), Fortran can save you a lot of ballache.
What's to be baffled about? Exercise is tiring, time-consuming, and sometimes painful. People generally avoid such activities, absent any overriding motivation.
How can you tell from the picture and listing that it's counterfeit? Is the picture of a real one? If not, you should be able to report it as not OEM.
For many particular examples, there have already been enough rathole spelunkers to provide useful data. Maybe start looking in the places where there isn't already useful data?
Technically, at HARC - https://blog.ycombinator.com/harc
> I pretty much agree entirely but have been too ashamed to say it :)

I can understand that entirely, it's way too easy to get ostracized for having a positive view on Maven or Java these days.

Java as a language has warts, but thankfully there's a thriving community around the JVM and a wealth of alternate languages to pick up. Still, you can pull Maven out of my cold, dead hands.

> As a tech decision maker I would love to build future projects with Rust or OCaml

I would love to use OCaml but the lack of interfaces to a lot of tools we use really bites, so I've settled for F# (can't wait for .Net Core support). Until there's DB2 for i drivers plus Laserfiche by some miracle supporting any programming language not deemed "enterprise-grade" I'm stuck with .Net or JVM languages for a lot of things I do daily :(
Are there cellular automata in the brain?
Could you give an example of what you mean by "safe meta-definition"? I'd like to understand this better.
The real reason to do the 2nd order is get new things rather than incrementing on older poorer ideas.
> I bristle anytime anyone thinks any existing functional language is better for multicore.

.. and have they read the paper for this multicore? Though it has a large number of processors, there are severe resource constraints per node, with respect to how large a local program can be and how much memory is available.
Hi Alan,

I've heard you frequently compare the OOP paradigm to microbiology and molecules. It seems like even Smalltalk-like object interactions are very different from, say, protein-protein interactions.

How do you think this current paradigm of message-sending could be improved upon to enable more powerful, perhaps protein-like composition?
>Then it's unreasonable for you to assume any intervention to stop Amazon is unwarranted

I do not assume that. Maybe they can figure out a reasonable intervention. But the reasons in the article just don't sound honest or strong to me.

>but you prefer efficiency above Parisians' quality of life and economic stability.

I don't. I think that giving Parisians the option to buy their groceries in more ways, should increase their QOL. And I don't see how it could significantly threaten economic stability. I would love to hear a real argument to the contrary. But it's also fine for me not be convinced, and for you to be.

>I've not attacked anybody, I've just shown you the limits of a system of thought based on economic efficiency.

Yeah, which no one in their right mind proposes, I certainly did not, and is therefore irrelevant, and an utter strawman. And, as I said before, a classic slippery slope fallacy.
We are currently considering going with Google Cloud but were not sure if it's going to be any better then other company's offerings.

Apparently Urs has an OKR to become the top 2nd cloud provider. This tells me Google has accepted the fact they can't compete with AWS and are fighting for second place against the likes of Microsoft.

We follow you're miniclusters project and have noticed that you just finished the deployment of your Japan site. Which other locations are you going to cover in the near future?
Either the engineer is young, or hasn't been doing systems programming for long enough.
Otherwise known as the specific inverted pyramid style historically used by newspapers specifically for technology reasons--so the story could be more or less cut at any point. Many magazines don't follow this format.

That said, as I've written before, a lot of longer pieces ramble around and take way too long to get to the heart of the matter. And there's certainly nothing wrong with a short paraphrase whether it's literally an abstract or a bit more of a teaser (especially if the main point really does need some build-up).
Executing code with single input value is a subset of (symbolic) execution of the same code with all values.

You cannot "examine the code" without executing it, partially or in full, with some input or intermediate values or (symbolically) with all of them.

I am sure I sound contrary to "common definitions" - so be it. I also think that dynamic typing is a subset of static typing, more or less for the same reason.
You can still use the CLI, there is nothing stopping you.
The design does not /have/ to involve writing a compiler. For instance, the X3J13 committee designed the ANSI Common Lisp standard, but left writing implementations up to third parties. On the other hand, the team of Julia language developers both design and write the compiler.

I guess it depends on your motivations for creating the language. Programmers will often design a language and write the compiler/interpreter themselves as a learning experience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X3J13

http://julialang.org/
Detecting cats in images with OpenCV
> I think on some level, I just like to occasionally take stock of the current state of the art and put together a parts list, do the assembly, and feel the satisfaction of a nice, clean setup that is running faster than the last thing. So instead I just offer to build for friends when they are in need of an upgrade. I still get to enjoy the hobbyist aspect and even though I don't typically charge for the effort, they always leave me with a case of good beer or a bottle of some nice Scotch.

I understand what you mean. I had waay more fun building my PC than using it. Once it was all done and I had Windows 10 installed I had nothing else to do and it was just sitting there. Let's just say that I was underwhelmed with the final outcome, especially since I don't game much these days due to time constraints.

I am thinking of getting a new case later this year and installing an aftermarket cooler because this is the one thing I never got to do for my current build, but oh boy the boredom afterwards :(

I would definitely be down to build a PC for anybody who was interested - no charge. The work would be its own reward for me.

But yea, it is impossible to chase that high you get when putting together a parts list perpetually as building rigs is an expensive hobby.
I love Bret Victor's work!

He is certainly one of the most interesting and best thinkers of today.
What you think of the terms between artists and labels is not really relevant to the matter at hand. No one is forced to sign with a big label. If you want someone's money, then you have to be willing to play by their rules. If the contract terms are too one-sided, then other labels would undercut the competition by offering better terms. This is what happens.

But again, totally irrelevant to YouTube's massive copyright heist. There's no justification for basing your business model on copyright infringement. No justification for having an asinine takedown system that doesn't change the fact that the top result will be yet another illegal copy of the video you just spent forever trying to get taken down.
Keystone.js is the best Node.js alternative for WordPress
I thought the article made some interesting points, but the plentiful spelling errors were a red flag. They detracted from my reading experience and casted a doubt on the credibility of the author's writing.

Examples: won;t, he(the) waste, yesterdays, todays, it's power source, flouride, bug(big), radio-active vs. radioactive, lots of unnecessarily Capitalized Words.
Usually it's neutron radiation that makes things radioactive[1]. Really energetic particles can do the same[2]. But the positron emission from Flourine-18 I don't think has enough energy to do that.

[1] Being neutral particles they can easily be absorbed by the nucleus of whatever. Adding an extra neutron may result in an unstable nucleolus.

[2] Friend that worked at SLAC (big linear accelerator) gave us a tour and mentioned the block of aluminum they use to backstop the beam. He said it gets slightly radioactive.

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/pubs/slacpubs/1250/slac-pub-140...
You should try it. The toolbar is just there to see the status of the daemon and adjust vm settings. You still use the cli to use docker just like on linux.
Imagine:
1. trying to read something long, or
2. going off to a follow a link and to come back and respond,
only to find that the page has been refreshing while you looked away. Now you have to scroll about to find the place you were at in order to respond or to continue reading the comments.
I don't like the "diet, not exercise, is the key to weight lose" matra because exercise goals(run a 5k in X minutes, bench press X lbs 6 times) in my experience are the far bigger motivators(though I've never been severely overweight).
Ya know, I used to be in your boat, wondering why folks don't just get off their ass. But it occurred to me that if I didn't actually like running, I don't know what would motivate me to do so. It's like telling people to quit smoking. You don't think they don't already know it's bad for them? But for some reason they keep puffing away.

So we've established that people are lazy, and that "just exercise" would do them wonders (or at least be a lifestyle improvement). And they still don't take the dog for a 30 minute walk. Given that, rather than chastising and feeling superior about our own fitness (for example, I ran ten miles yesterday; mmm, I'm practically marinating in smugness right now), what can we do to get people out the door?

Of course, if I could answer that, I'd be at my book signing and not shouting at the wall on HN.
Alan, what is your view of deep/machine learning as an approach to programming? The Deepmind Atari player is only 1500 lines of code, because the system learns most of the the if/thens. Software is eating the world, but will learning (eventually) eat the software?
People for the Ethical Treatment of Reinforcement Learners
YCR is not "my group" -- I'm very happy to have helped set up HARC! with its very impressive group of Principal Investigators (including Bret).
It's a combination of that, and making the place someplace that's welcoming for all. Things like anti-discrimination policies for LGBT persons are a must, as well as having a welcoming community. Having great weather doesn't hurt, either.
> E.g. such small modules could get abandoned and neglected with bugs or security issues

How well do you think a module with 1000 users is likely to be maintained, vs a create-your-own-wheel equivalent?

Do you think writing the latter is an adequate use of your time?

Do you think you'll discover all the edge cases?

How does writing your own wheel module rank when compared to working on features your customers want?
Typing in VR, accessibility for amputees, a variety of business uses where one-handed device operation boosts productivity. The typing system design is actually more important than the device itself. If we can standardize a good universal system for one-handed typing, we can tweak the hardware as we go.
Pieter Abbeel has been working towards household robots for quite a while; given his involvement and several of his students at OpenAI it's not surprising they'd be thinking along similar lines. The issues you mention are real, but current hardware is already capable of useful tasks if we had software to control it properly. For example, here's a demo of a tele-operated PR2 performing household chores:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2GAz5F03Ls#t=60s
Driverless Cars to Fuel Suburban Sprawl
I particularly found the following section in the article very compelling.

"Many people will be surprised at how little you need to do to achieve these results. Years ago, in an effort to get in shape, I tried the P90X routine. It proved too hard for me. Later, when I tried Insanity, it beat me so badly that people at work kept asking me if I was ill. Two years ago, I tried P90X3. It was a bit more manageable, but I still couldn’t keep it up.

I’m not alone in thinking that physical activity to improve health should be hard. When I hear friends talk about exercising, they discuss running marathons, participating in cross-fit classes or sacrificing themselves on the altar of Soul Cycle. That misses the point, unfortunately. All of these are way, way more than you need to do to get the benefits I’ve already described.

The recommendations for exercise are 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity physical activity for adults, or about 30 minutes each weekday.

Moderate intensity is probably much less than you think. Walking briskly, at 3 to 4 miles per hour or so, qualifies. So does bicycling slower than 10 miles an hour. Anything that gets your heart rate somewhere between 110 and 140 beats per minute is enough. Even vacuuming, mowing the lawn or actively walking your dog might qualify."

A lot of people abstain from exercise because they think it's "hard" and "scary," when really, 30 minutes of brisk walking to and from the grocery story would do just fine.
So I assume the new native hypervisor is available from cli as well? Then that's excellent!
The ease of use is a wonderful improvement, but working with any locally mounted volumes makes it completely unusable.

https://forums.docker.com/t/file-access-in-mounted-volumes-e...
You gain experience by going down similar rat holes, until you feel that you can adequately compare the situation you are in now to an experience in the past.

You'll still be wrong, but perhaps less often.
Self-Ranking Search with Elasticsearch at Wattpad
At this point in the chain of thinking, you should read http://cr.yp.to/redo/honest-script.html
There is an oficial "Who is hiring" post the first day of each month. Post like this are usually ignored of flagged.

You can try reading the June edition: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11814828 (644 points, 19 days ago, 1032 comments)

Wait a week+ and repost this in the correct thread.
There are a dozen tools that do something similar.
How can you tell for sure that it's counterfeit? Just to be clear: I'm with you; this looks sketchy. I'm just wondering what particular signals you've picked up on.

I thought that when third parties sell on Amazon, they specify the catalog information that shows up there, such as "Apple Computers". Multiple different sellers can then list the same product for sale if they have it. Could there be a few legitimate people actually selling this along with some scammers, or is it entirely scammers?

Things I'm confused about: the product title seems to be misleading. I see "MagSafe" in there, but also "original Oem Apple MacBook Pro" (in caps). The product photo has an Apple logo on it, which is presumably trademarked. So if they sent me a generic adapter that wasn't Apple brand, then that would be false advertising. If they sent a device that wasn't really Apple, it would be counterfeiting.

What will you get when you buy it? I am tempted to buy one and see what happens.
Detroit I could see, as it was a central hub in the past, and much of that infrastructure still stands. Plus, given the problems they've had, property is really cheap, while still having access to the amenities of a city.
If you assume Apple cares about having a disk format in common with other platforms, sure, I'd agree that's probably possible. But I don't think they do; they seem to care a lot more about things like a unified codebase across their platforms, the energy-efficiency initiatives they've been pushing for a few years, owning the key tech in the products, etc.

One slide in the WWDC talk deck showed a bunch of divergent Apple storage technologies across all their platforms that are being replaced by APFS. If ZFS has to fork into weird variants to run well on the phone or watch, that seems less appealing than a single codebase optimized for just the stuff Apple products do.
key and motivation are not the same thing, if you have good genetics you can run fast even if you are overweight, as they say after all, you can't out-exercise a bad diet
What's your most successful problem solving technique?
Show HN: Stream to mongo db directly [npm]
Reddit commenter implying this AMA is fake. How are HN accounts verified? How do we know this is a real AMA? Just curious.
There are lots of fun ways to exercise - I hate running, but love to ride bikes, for instance.