skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> If you don't want to learn java/python/ruby, then forget about server programming.

Guess I'll have to inform the .NET, PHP, JavaScript, Clojure, Common Lisp, Haskell, Erlang and Elixir[1] guys that they are, in fact, _wrong_.

[1] ...and C, and any programming language in existence...
I have to be honest: the fact this is in "things not to read" from ISO is one of the strongest endorsements I could imagine. For that to happen, it must both be successful enough to get on their radar, and also to tick them off.

That said, I know why this is on the list. Zed honestly doesn't like C, by which I mean that he recommends a lot of things that are (in my opinion) genuinely best-practice, but fly in the face of either historical norms, or the techniques that the ISO C team wants to push. Depending on what you're aiming for, this might indeed make it a bad work—but it can also make it a great one. I'd liken it in some sense to DJB's projects: Zed recommends a fairly unorthodox, but (again, in my opinion) excellent way of writing C. If you need to interface with people who write C the way most people write C—you're working on an operating system, perhaps, or a legacy codebase—this may be a problem. If you're writing C because you need to write a few components of your project in C for performance or [lack of] abstraction reasons, and would prefer not to hate yourself later, it's great.
Why web technologies (HTTP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript) should all burn to hell?
Thanks! Here are the reason why trait fields are preferable over accessors in case anyone else is wondering:

1. The borrow checker assumes accessors can do anything, freezing all other fields. This does not happen with trait fields.
2. Accessors have to use dynamic dispatch in case of trait objects, resulting in worse performance.
Hopefully not too much more. I come to HN for the content, not the features. Features distract ;-)
So are they saying radar wouldn't see a tree fallen across the road? Is there a backup system for that kind of thing?
"The Engineer" is a trade publication, so its writers have a very different target to hit than, say, those of a daily paper.
You also have a profit motive for having your credit risk assessed accurately - you get credit, at a better interest rate.

The banks do pay for it - they have to pay a fee do get your credit report.
Constraints Liberate, Liberties Constrain
I am saddened by how long we've known about cetacean communications--decades--and how little progress there's been, given the giant strides tech has made in DSP and pattern matching. If only we applied a fraction of the tech effort we put into cell phones or weapons.
Following on the parent's comment on the human eye :

One of the most striking graphs I've seen was the plot of the transparency of water vs optical wavelength.

Basically, there's only a tiny transparency gap, which coincides almost exactly with the wavelengths the human eye is sensitive to.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/chemical/watabs.h...
>Obviously OP is too picky...

Yes, unfortunately. I know it, but just can't help it. Maybe I'm an idealist, or maybe just not that familiar w/ the programming world.
I don't really give too much of a shit about this particular book, but this logic is, to me, amazing.

It's a book about programming --- a very specific kind of programming. The only reason for normal people to read is to acquire some new set of skills.

I am having a hard time thinking of any --- literally any --- new C programming skill I would value at less than $30.

That doesn't mean you can't reasonably warn people off a book! It might not be worth the time to read. It might be totally inaccurate, or fail to communicate any new skills. But otherwise, "I wouldn't pay $30 for it" wouldn't make sense even if the book were just 5 pages long.
I'm not understanding how they surmount the soda can problem?
Maybe they'll stop using the autobahn as their yardstick and focus on real world usage outside of germany.
All that tells me is that Paul Graham doesn't understand what Nokia's problems were, or else he doesn't understand the market for electric cars.

If Nokia's executives skipped dog-and-pony shows in order to focus on making coherent decisions, they would still be a major player in the handset market.

In addition, as you move, demographically, farther afield from tech millionaires, interest in electric cars drops precipitously. People are interested in a car that meets their needs; if that car is electric, they'll buy it. If it isn't, they won't. It really is that simple.
> Everything that has an off switch has an on switch.

That is very naive. You can say that only because real and well organized attacks are very very rare.

Power Grid on its own is very complex system, and it is not trivial to revive it after blackout.

And second paragraph does not save it. Weak spots are everywhere. A few guys with rented trucks could cause blackout in several counties for weeks.
I think that the parent's point isn't about languages or ecosystems.
And to think all this technology is used mostly for cheap holiday flights.
Makes sense as it is just another way of forcing more of a rental market where people don't actually own their vehicles.
> Python is designed with the express purpose of making writing horrible code at lest a little bit harder to do.

This will of course depend on your definition of "horrible code" but in general I don't agree with this. From the standpoint of horrible code being non-readable there exists many constructs in python that don't lend themselves to readable code despite being very useful and expressive. Not that an experienced practitioner cannot invent patterns to make these constructs as readable as possible (list comprehensions are top of mind here).

I think the key here is for the practitioner to invent the patterns that make constructs like macros usable. In the right contexts, they're incredibly powerful and can increase the productivity of an individual, and when used right even a whole team.

> The point here is that if a language feature is mostly known for it's negative effects, maybe it's not a good feature?

I would counter that it's likely not a feature for beginners, rather than being a bad feature.
Miniaturization of existing technologies can be a major innovation in the same way cost reduction can be. Now this type of refrigerator is more mobile, deployable, etc. Is this a big deal? I have no idea. Seems cool though! (pun intended)
The problem here is that Schildt's books really aren't good.

But as far as LCTHW goes: I doubt very much its author has the same objectives for writing a book about C that the standards weenies do, and I doubt very much that they took that into account before warding people away from the book.
Link's broken for anyone else? I get:

> Oops! Something went wrong. Please scroll down to find your content.
Hadn't heard of it before. Sure, will have a look at it. Thanks!
Do you not see how this argument is symmetric though? It's like when Alice says to Bob "Your vote for the green party was wasted, it could have gone towards the democratic party". Sure it could have. But was Alice's vote not also wasted, when her vote could have gone towards the green party? What prevents all the dems from voting green?

"Momentum; i.e. the green party's candidacy is far less realistic" says Alice. "Therefore, the democratic party deserves your green vote." I don't like winner-takes-all elections since it incentives a two-party system. But despite this current state, I'd still vote for the green candidate if I preferred it over the dem candidate. Because in the long term, it gives the dems an incentive to more closely align with the greens if they want improve their chance of success.

In this sense, the green vote wasn't a distraction, it was a message. The sentiment that incumbents feel entitled to third party votes and feel that third party votes are "wasted", I find baffling. I could argue that all votes are wasted, because nobody but me voted for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The only interpretation under which others' votes could be said to be "a distraction" rather than "political input" is if one believed in the objective superiority of their own beliefs.

I wonder if you would change your tune if (hypothetically) UBI one day gained more momentum than Universal Health Care. But in your ideal world, this could never happen. Because all reasonable people would expend effort only into the coalition with the most momentum, which A) happens to be Universal Health Care ATM and B) will only ever be Universal Health Care in the future since the positive feedback loop never breaks.
It's an awfully hard question to answer without some idea of what you are trying to do to make money.

For instance you really can make web apps with very little Javascript and, for many applications, this is the way to go.

For instance, if you take the "path less taken" and not load your site up with 15 MB of Javascript, tracking pixels, third-party scripts, another 100 MB of junk from a CDN and instead move a minimal amount of data through http/2 you can make a site that loads like a bullet being shot out of a gun on a computer, phone, tablet, whatever.

This site

https://legalentityidentifier.info/lei/get/5493000HEH4YCM7L6...

has competitors that take 2 minutes to load the first page because the developers throw in everything but the kitchen sink so they can pad their resumes. It's hard to get people to see the difference, however, without actually sending them to a competitor.

Frankly I think CDNs are a scam like DOIs. DNS lookups are one of the worst things when it comes to long tail latency and if you hit enough servers the odds approach 100% that the browser is going to freeze up for 15 sec during loading because of a DNS hang.
Ignoring the magical thinking aspect of this (where will this money come from), this assumes that people will still want to work after receiving basic income.

This also has the inflationary consequences that I mentioned in another comment: you're effectively increasing wages without increasing productivity. This will cause prices to rise because employers will face higher taxes so that the state can support basic income, and demand will rise because people will have more money.

This will cause inflation, and in the long run purchase power will not increase, while society will be worse off with less people doing productive work.
Sorry, you said earlier that you were someone who understood computers well enough to know that you would never want one to replace human judgment in matters of justice. I thought you'd be interested in knowing that computation (delegated to machines for efficiency and consistency) is actually part of the justice system. The Bureau of Prisons has a department that is named, "Designation and Sentence Computation Center".

Maybe they don't actually use physical computers to perform the computation (though that'd be a bit weird if they didn't), but I think that's an irrelevant implementation detail as the Supreme Court has upheld the use of an unyielding mathematical formula to determine the length of a prisoner's sentence:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/09-5201.pdf

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/09-5201.ZD.html
E-Commerce a Boon for Rural America but Costly for Retailers and Delivery Services
> not trivial to revive it after blackout

and yet, we do it on the regular.

edit:

> real and well organized attacks are very very rare

and why is that? if the system is as vulnerable as they say and the world is as full of enemies as they say then why is it not constantly going down?
Not exactly this case. From the link:

> No warnings are emitted for objects of type ``std::unique_ptr`` and
> ``std::shared_ptr``, as they have defined move behavior.

Regardless, I am happy to see more static checking for C++, and am following the GSL/Core Guidelines closely. It's important work.
We have no evidence that the current Tesla system causes fewer injuries or fatalities. Moreover, the alternative isn't non-automation but other reasonable automated designs, ones that do address the failure modes.
google has waze which i presume sends high-g events like sudden braking to a central collector somewhere.

waze is how their maps product knows where the traffic is on surface streets.
it does if there is a better book available on the market for $20.
The Reuters article you linked is far more interesting than the original one. It hints at a rift in the management about whether to accelerate or slow electric car development. If the latter fraction wins the Nokia comparison seems not inept.
One could also argue: do black communities commit more crime or is it just enforced more in black communities due to more police presence, etc...

I'm not aware of any conclusive data that shows that black people are more predisposed to commit crime even if the outcome is higher crime rates in black communities.
> You're ignoring the seemingly obvious threat of less job opportunities over time that provide a living, thriving wage.

That's your assumption, and a baseless one at that.

Back in reality, we're experiencing unprecedented economic development which includes the inception of a whole new economic sector.

You're essentially complaining that buggy whip artisans have less job opportunities in a world that's creating whole new jobs such as forum moderators, social media experts, and data scientists.

Today's economy even creates jobs playing video games, surfing, and talking about gourmet food.

The world's most developed economies are enjoying structural unemployment rates.

And you're here talking about "less job opportunities over time".

You need to separate facts from fiction, including your own baseless beliefs.
The bigger problem in replacing doctors is actually getting enough data for machine learning in the medical field because of privacy issues. For instance you can't give out head CTs because you can reconstruct how the face that belongs to it looks like.
People are more comfortable with data collection when they understand what the data will be used for and agree that the use is valuable to society. If the use is unclear or doesn't seem important, then people worry that the real reason is something creepy that's been left unsaid.

In this case, people mostly agree that R&D in self-driving cars is important, and can clearly see how this data helps with that. Whereas identifying traffic in Google Maps/Apple Maps feels less important, and the connection between location tracking and detecting traffic takes a little more work to understand.
I wonder if you could use brake cleaning fluid. That should be easier to find.
Perceived value is greater. Everyone wants self driving cars to be easily accessible and without human intervention. I'd give up my data personally for that goal. Its certainly more valuable than having Google direct me to a route which is 2 minutes faster.
I would assume that this is because it is already kinda-sorta common behavior for software to track this kind of data, while this is an entirely new thing for cars.
> For any non-trivial organization ( > 5 users), you cannot expect all of them to SSH into a single machine.

That's exactly the use case we built Userify for (https://userify.com)
I don't quite see how it is "creepy". Tesla's autopilot is not a requirement for operating their vehicle. It is an experimental value add that you have to agree in order to be included in the program.

As with any beta testing of software, high-fidelity diagnostic data is a must, especially in these circumstance as you have no other way of simulating the various scenarios people find themselves in when driving.
It's mostly because (to my knowledge) we don't currently know of any ways in which quantum computing will make artificial intelligence faster or more feasible. If you read up on the relationship between quantum and classical complexity classes, and what effective quantum algorithms we've developed so far, this may be more clear.
How can you hate JS if you have zero programming experience? Try it first.
Exchanging privacy for direct physical safety is a little easier to swallow I'd imagine.

Assuming of course that new Starbucks don't start showing up on routes preferred by Tesla drivers.
If that's from the freenode ##c wiki, you should probably take that as a ringing endorsement.

##c is laughable. I'm not sure they actually use C, or just think about the C Abstract Machine and Glorious Specification.
Windows 7 Activator and Product Keys Generator
Yes, you do not need a 100 node cluster to crunch 1.75GB of data. I can do that on my phone. What's the author's point?!
A single radar return at just he right angle might make the soda can look huge. But with multiple sensors moving relative to the soda can and sampling at 10Hz, you end up able to form a "real" composite of the object
Do'h. Of course.

I'd still prefer the framework do it for me. It seems quite involved.

Thanks for taking time to answer my questions!
> Broadly your position appears to be that Africa is not necessarily backward but that if it is definitely backward then this is the consequence of Europeans conquering their lands centuries ago

Centuries ago? Most African states got independence just 50 years ago!! Get your timelines right. Broadly, my position is that there is nothing superior about Europeans or inferior and backward about Africans, which is the main thrust of your argument, is it not? That the problems and state of Africa today is simply caused by the backwardness and faults of its inhabitants, right?

My position is that you are trying very hard to rationalize what are simply feelings good old fashioned prejudice, coupled with a lot of ignorance. I cannot

> There must be a strong relationship between colonization and poverty. After all, they are taking your things.

If the colonizers are racist taskmasters who view their subjects as some sort of sub-human species, the effects of colonization are devastating.
Not just economically, but socially and culturally. For example, where do you think the practice of militias chopping off victims hands came from? Do you think such barbaric practices existed before the arrival of the European colonizer?

> Nations or ethic groups that are conquered by aggressors take considerable time to recover, perhaps many generations.

If your aim is to be accurate, then ask precise questions. What is "considerable time"?! Who are the aggressors? How are they treating their subjects? What social and cultural structures did they find coming in, and what did they leave behind when going? Who did they hand power over to when they "left"? What resources did they plunder? Its very easy to be hand-wavy and prejudiced when thinking broad, general terms. So do your homework, get more specific and your ignorance, and hopefully prejudice will disappear.
That list is maintained by some of the Freenode C regulars. Anyone who has spent time on Freenode C knows to take anything they say with a grain of salt.
We don't "like" MAD because on the narrative plane, it's a disgusting concept. Still, here we are.

This depends on whether or not you believe the ideology can travel past the level of technological sophistication necessary to deploy nukes. The ideology itself is pretty self-abnegating - it has many marques of a suicide cult.

This being said, there was this weekend ( from Aug 18th, 2016 ) a repeat of Douglas Cohn's "WW4", in which one nightmare scenario is ISIS "invading" Pakistan and becoming nuke-capable.

I imagine that'd get our collective attention if it looked like it was forming. I hope somebody is paying attention...

Cohn also notes that, at least in the offensive role, one division of American troops could dissipate ISIS in short order. After the offensive comes the "you broke it, you bought it" part, which is why we don't just.
I've seen this referenced few times as a resource for learning C beyond the basics.

And my question for anyone who has gone through it, Is it worth the tag ?
I don't think of it as a "world gone to hell scenario" so much as a "World War II scenario" or a "Bronze Age collapse scenario". Smaller cargo planes should be somewhat more survivable than bigger ones in an environment full of Angels' Teeth and other micro-drones, but downing 250 large cargo planes still only requires landing 250 small robots on them and cutting a fuel line or something.
This is no different than how people viewed the idea of using your real name online pre- and post-Facebook.

Privacy erodes naturally. It is inventible. The benefits outweigh the costs almost always. The need of the many outweighs the needs of the few.

The future is one in which humans are recognized, at least by the machines, as being more like a single organism than a group of individuals.
I can completely relate to this mindset.

I was once similarly minded in that I had read enough about programming to know what was out there and what it was used for.

I then formed impressions about what was 'hard' and what was 'easy' and what I would like. It took me ~2.5 years from the start of my desire to learn, to actually write my first line of code. Picking a language, then picking a learning methodology took me that long.

Then, 2 years of learning/programming on the side, I got my first paying gig for writing code (I'm was never a full time software engineer, just learning on the side, like you). This was 2 weeks ago.

Perhaps this is a common path, or we're a special breed. What helped me stay motivated was trying to solve my own problems with code. First project was a script that took data from a google spreadsheet and texted it to me at relevant times. Took me 3-4 months to complete. Could write it in 3-4 hours now.

Find a (small) problem, write code to solve it. Monetization will come, but probably slower than you expect.
Good luck.
Where did you learn CS that they didn't have lots of cyclic data structures? We had those even in our intro class at Berkeley...
you sound like a fat person who is trying to get in shape but is extremely picky about which 'routine' he wants to follow. he has a reason to hate each one so, they're all not good enough for him. he's looking for the perfect routine, man. one that will guarantee success.

oh and also that annoying bit about eating right, well that sounds like a pain, so let's not do that, either.

all this, while sitting on the couch, daydreaming of 6-pack abs. in reality, all you have to do is walk around the damn block and you're 1/4 mile ahead of where you were before.
I had a similar idea recently, originally I intended to try and identify "fashionable" color palettes, which worked pretty well:
https://idle.nprescott.com/2016/scraping-color-palettes.html

and only later tried branching out to the 100 most popular sites:
https://idle.nprescott.com/2016/image-capture-crawler.html

I tried ImageMagick's histogram functionality and a K-Means but wasn't happy with the results. I didn't finish doing a meaningful color extraction from the most popular sites because of difficulty getting (in my mind) representative samples from more complex images (like the linked GitHub homepage screenshot). I still intend on circling back at some point and trying a color quantization.

I hadn't thought to scrape the CSS colors directly, that's an interesting approach. I'd like to see the colors sorted in some way, to get a better sense of the range for each site.
I don't think that anyone is proposing a transparent algorithm that can be audited. They're all proposing trendy, proprietary machine learning techniques sold as AI. If you're just talking about boring transparent algorithms, we've always had the technology to devise them - it's called pen and paper. Mandatory Minimum sentences and Three Strikes laws are clearly punishment algorithms.

The point you're making about the Brock Turner case is well taken; the judge was another standout Stanford athlete in a sport that doesn't have a professional level. My guess is that these algorithms won't be devised by poor black people who dropped out of high school, but they will have a lot to say about how much worse poor black people who dropped out of high school are than people from the demographics of the people who do devise them.