skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'll give it a shot. I'll assume you know what an interface and struct are in go.

Conceptually, an interface in Go can be thought of as two things: a concrete type, and a pointer to the implementing struct of that type.

For example, if you have `var err error = &os.PathError{}`, then the `err` variable is of type `error interface`. That `error interface` simply stores `{type = os.pathError, value = &os.PathError{}}`.

The need for the interface to have the value and the type is obvious if you consider that interfaces may have methods called upon them (so they must have an implementation), but may also be used in type assertions / switches (so they must know their underlying type).

Go, however, insists that each type has a zero value so that it may be instantiated simply, and interfaces are no different. A user may type `var err error` and create a "zero-value" interface. What should that logically be? Well, it absolutely has no way to have an underlying concrete struct since go does not provide a way to specify a default implementation for an interface, and the type is unknown too.. so it makes sense that it takes the form `{type = nil, value = nil}`.

That's a nil interface.

A nil interface is useful in many cases. One common one is to indicate the lack of a return value, such as an error. `if err := f(); err != nil` is a common pattern, and takes advantage of the existence of a nil interface, since the function must have returned one (via something like `func f() error { return nil }`).

It's also useful to have a nil interface when instantiating something sometimes. For example:

var x myInterface
// x must be *something* here
if condition1 { x = func1() }
else { x = func2() }

It's mostly useful for consistency with other parts of the language in that things have zero values.

I think the only alternative would be for an interface specification to include a "default implementation" to be used as its zero value, but that would not work if a package defines an interface of what it takes in (it would just define a default zero of a sentinel 'zero' value to error on), nor for the `interface{}` shenanigans.

Hopefully that helped, but if it didn't please ask a more specific question.
Things have improved on many fronts since the 2004 challenge.

Arguably the biggest difference between the 2004 challenge (best distance was 7 miles) and the 2005 challenge (5 vehicles finished the race) was simply experience and refinement of existing technology. Stanford and CMU (top finishers) completed the race with very different approaches.

The Velodyne lidar was a prototype in the 2005 challenge and the first commercial version was extremely valuable to the teams that used it during the Urban Challenge. Google relied heavily on it and similar sensing technologies while developing their fleet, and many other groups going after full autonomy have also relied on lidar, so it certainly continues to be important. There's lots of different opinions on the future value of lidar vs vision. Camera quality and processing power + the effectiveness of CNNs are pushing a lot of people towards vision as a primary sensor.

There's also been a lot of progress for driving in urban environments in modeling, mapping, and prediction. A lot of this comes from collecting lots of data and building maps and behavioral models for objects the vehicle will interact with (cars, people...) Obviously for that the advancements in ML and deep learning don't hurt.
Yes, but it's misleading to compare city+state spending in NYC to solely city spending in SF, and conclude that SF is underspending on the homeless.

To be a fair comparison, we'd also have to include what the state of California spends on the homeless.
> the question about the bank teller doesn't seem like the strongest indicator. It seems more like a parlor trick that relies on our "system 1" brain short circuiting before our "system 2" kicks in.

The question about the bank teller is a parlor trick that exploits normal language processing, specifically the Gricean Maxim of Relevance ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle#Maxim_of... ). The maxim specifies that if somebody takes the trouble to point something out to you (say, that someone you've never met used to be a very politically-active left-winger), what they pointed out must be relevant to the conversation.

It's basically another exercise in https://xkcd.com/169/ -- the experimenters aren't grasping the lesson that "communicating badly and then acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness".
"her hiring package to almost $70 million."

Everything you need to know about cost cutting under Ruth Porat.
Sure, there are lots of indices that format things in different ways (sounds like delta encoding). Just not Postgres btrees.
Python's behavior is the same as Go's. For example, this code:

l = []
for i in xrange(3):
l.append(lambda: i)
print [f() for f in l]

prints [2, 2, 2].
Meet Our Face of the Week and Be the Next
That seems like a funny place to start cutting costs. You can run Google's datacenters for about 1 second on the same money as all those shirts.

When these people talk about cost they are talking about headcount.
I offered to take over a library that provides a Pythonic interface for Redis a little while ago. The original author accepted, and I've really enjoyed bringing the project back to life.

I'll probably do something like that again - it would be great if there were a good list of projects that are looking for maintainers.
This kind of News is so fun. Google supported ISIS and Al Nusra in Syria, we'll not forget.
It's been about 40 years since Reagan was governor of California. Using him as an excuse for conditions today is a bit bizarre.
I agree. Especially in Manhattan where spot check is taken very seriously by the authority. You can see health reports on all restaurants in NYC here

http://safediningnyc.com
If you're an independent contractor, pay for your own supplies and build their replacement costs into your rate.

When I do contract work and my computer breaks, I don't expect a new one from whoever I'm working for at the time.
Looks like money laundring to me.
> My family is Chinese-American … A Japanese waitress stood by, smiling, her pen poised over her notepad. It was obvious I was a foreigner from the way I was dressed and from my company; but still, I felt some wild instinct flare up inside of me, an urge to acknowledge our shared ethnicity …

Y'know, there are a huge number of both Japanese & Chinese who would disagree that they have any shared ethnicity at all …
New fantasy book (lulu.com)
hey
check out this new fantasy book "the enlightenment of the far north by Freja Stille" on lulu.com
Its a tale full of adventure, intrigue and imaginative storytelling.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/freja-stille/the-enlightenment-of-the-far-north/paperback/product-22866799.html
Every tech company wants equal gender ratios and female CMU grads are usually top tier. Not that the guys are bad either but when you churn out a couple hundred per year it's not as special.
I know. I normally see it presented as: "here's the lever version, and here's the fat guy variation, and isn't it surprising that people tend to answer them differently even though they have the same outcome?"

This is what I find absurd - just because the questioner stipulates that two actions would have the same results doesn't make them morally equivalent (from the perspective of a person who can't see the future).
I have friends running small food businesses in Chicago --- I was an investor in one of them, a butcher --- and while my friends have run into problems after inspections and suchlike, none of them have been shut down or really jeopardized in any way. The inspection drama I've seen has, I hate to say it, been mostly reasonable.

(The neighborhood complaints, less so.)

Am I just "lucky", and this is a commonplace problem with other people's companies?
It was a project that I didn't give a lot of love, and hence just gave them commit rights. It was about a year later before I looked again, by which time they had done far too much work on top of their non-cross-platform bits for me to revert.

I still didn't use the project myself; and didn't care enough to fix it, so I just removed myself.
> Does it really save that much space and bandwidth?

I would think on Google scale saving a byte is like couple hundred dollars or some other non-trivial amount (but at same google scale this is pennies).

Then again, if Google homepage is 5 bytes less, gigabytes will be saved delaying heat death of the universe or something… :)
$2 million (or whatever number) may be the standard rate used to compensate others for a lost life, but does anyone willingly sell their life for $2 million?

I think there is a difference between how we try to compensate for the loss of something irreplaceable (a life) or disincentive negligence, and the price of something bought and sold.
Stuff I used to do in 1995/1996
New York explosion leaves dozens injured
How to Disable Copy Paste in Blogger
I think Apple calls these *Detectors:

https://developer.apple.com/reference/foundation/nsdatadetec...

They essentially act as regexes that when match allow for an external application to be called with that text sent as a parameter. This allows for dates to be clickable and create and event in a calendar for example.

They also do a good job of taking phone numbers from emails and when an unknown call comes in suggesting that it might be the person who included that in an email.

These features generally work well in their apps, but I think there's less support for third parties to create custom options (though I haven't actually tried so not sure).
Ask HN: Malware 32-bit
I was reading up on malware and malware removal, I don't quite understand this though: Can 32-bit malware(Written in VB6) infect 64-bit systems in the way of adding code to the end of the programs memory space, access the kernal or inject code in an application?
I think phonemes miss the mark with dolphins.

Their sounds simulatenously engage hearing senses while providing the sending party about additional metadata about the recipient. The sounds practically xrays the recipients body and surroundings for information about their immediate reaction and state of mind.

This is much more advanced than anything we consider relatable.
I think there is something satisfying about the topic, that we enjoy rehashing. And to opine on what's new since last time, hoping for exciting new developments.
> From 2013 to 2015 San Francisco experienced a 2% increase in the total number of homeless, while the nation as a whole saw a 5.2% decrease.

Greyhound.

No, really.

San Francisco's homeless problem is the nation's problem.
Regarding the shell inside emacs buffer: neovim can do this too now.
It's not clear which kind of nil interface you mean. :)

In Go, interface variables are a pair of values: a pointer to the concrete value stored in the variable, and a pointer to the type of that concrete value (i.e. the actual struct).

So there are essentially three kinds of nil in Go: a raw nil pointer, an interface variable with both nil value and type pointers, and an interface variable with a nil value pointer, but a non-nil type pointer.

One way that the two "interface nils" differ is that, to follow the article's example, if you have a Cat variable containing a nil *Tabby, you can invoke Meow on it, and it'll print meow. This works because Tabby's Meow doesn't try to dereference its pointer-to-Tabby. However, if you have a Cat variable that's completely empty, invoking Meow on it will fail.
The state cannot compel you to seek shelter, nor accept medication or other mental health care, unless you are a danger to yourself or others.

Society moved away from institutionalizing people, so when a patient wants to get off their medication, drink, or get high they leave whatever community based program they are in and hit the streets.
If you live in SF (like me) and want to do something to help, consider donating time or money to a local charity focused on homelessness. My personal recommendation is Larkin Street Youth Services [0].

There are ~2000 homeless youth (age < 25) in San Francisco on any given night. These young people were often the victims of terrible family situations and have no support network. Larkin Street helps to provide shelter, counseling, education, and anything else they may need to get off the streets for good. More than 70% of the people who "graduate" from Larkin Street leave street life forever.

I know on Hacker News we like to talk about the political causes and solutions to a problem like this. But tomorrow's laws won't change the fact that there are homeless people sleeping on the street every night who need help. Charitable organizations are there to help meet these immediate needs.

[0] - http://larkinstreetyouth.org/
Yeah that was my first guess. My second guess would be the articles around the demise of nanomsg. http://sealedabstract.com/rants/nanomsg-postmortem-and-other...
I'd say the root cause is insisting that each type have a zero value.

Logically, this makes no sense. Types are basically sets. It makes perfect sense to define the set {1,2,3}, without any zero value.

However, if we think of a variable as a memory location, it's very convenient to be able to declare variables without explicitly initializing them.
Just a random note... there are very limited site-to-site scenarios where the IPSec offload will actually kick in. I wasn't able to get offload working for any kind of remote access scenario, meaning it's not usable as a VPN (unaccellerated strong crypto on the MIPS is < 10 Mbps)
I'm a musician, so I've been in a lot of restaurants. At one, I struck up an acquaintance with the chef. He told me: Every chef dreams of being in the food business, but they all realize after a while that they're making all of their money at the bar.

Coincidentally, his restaurant was financed by his dad.
I thought 'perforce' when I saw the headline. Perforce is something I'm stuck with at my current job, unfortunately.
>There has to be a fix for this with a process to make the assimilation process that's palatable for both sides of the culture.

I'm not sure what "2 sides of the culture" are there, but if a person immigrates to France they should assimilate to the French culture, this is what assimilation means.
There aren't really really 2 sides here, there is only one, and yes take it or leave while might sound harsh is pretty much the way to go because at some point you hit the tolerance paradox.

>And I bet you a lot of them also at some point felt unhappy or felt a sense of misalignment with the ideals of their host nation.

Well that's clearly a problem that should be addressed through education, not through "compromise".

>Some of them are brought up with the belief they're living in someone elses' world -- an unwelcomed guest that people have to 'handle' or or deal with.

Then again you fix that problem through education and cultural assimilation, if some one is being brought up and thought things which are antithetical to the worldview of the culture they live within it it's a problem.
Moral relativism doesn't work in the real world, we had no problems telling South Africa that Apartheid was bad, no one was making an argument that it was their culture.
If certain institutions are breeding ideals that are contrary to western ideals and values you deal with them on a case by case basis.
$40k a year is a living wage. Even $32k is a decent living wage (yes, even in the bay area). To me, these figures sound like we're too unimaginative as a society in figuring out better systems of distributing this money. I know people in the bay area living on a lot less and getting by ok. If we actually gave the homeless money instead of making them jump through hoops like zoo animals for the smallest of concessions, a bed here, some food stamps there, we could potentially start making a dent in this problem and giving people real chances. It's been demonstrated over and over again that this is something that can work. Why not give it a shot and start helping people find affordable government housing instead of perpetually squandering the money in the inefficient ways we have been doing?
My point is less about the t-shirts specifically (as I said, it's a minimal cost) and more about the company culture as a whole. If you can make a silly request for an office fire pole and the company will give you a fire pole, does that foster an attitude where you'll just throw more servers at a problem instead of thinking hard about your systems, or an attitude where a cool project will stay in development for a long time, even when the business case for it stops making sense.
I don't think they should call it "rationality", it's kinda loaded term. I think better would be to call it "critical thinking".

Edit: Not sure why I was downvoted. I referred to this part:

"R.Q. would measure the propensity for reflective thought — stepping back from your own thinking and correcting its faulty tendencies"

That's almost a perfect definition of what critical thinking is - being critical to your own thought.
What was your setup?

They send out monthly newsletters and things are coming along, just at a slower pace than everyone was hoping for. But no official release date yet.
Here Its Illegal to Own a Single Goldfish
I don't care for him either. He did an episode of wife swap and he intentionally raised his kids to shit all over everyone else's ideas 100% of the time. There's something to be said for questioning authority and ideas, but his whole family comes across as rude and immature.

I'm an atheist too, but its counterproductive to spend all of your time telling people how stupid they are.
It's a crazy and infuriating situation, when we're essentially forced to pay into a common fund which we then watch be grossly misused. I'm honestly not sure how much more an individual can do; this strikes me as an issue that educated voters have to come together on.

Of course then it becomes ever so clear as to why the drive to make sure that voters are often not educated has been so intense during the same period of this mismanagement.
I use Emacs' rmail with mairix as a search tool. I can link to emails via rmail like this:

[[rmail:<mbox-path>#<message-id>][link text]]

No need to type that out, M-x org-store-link does that for me in any rmail buffer.

I split my mboxes regularly, so I need to link them via mairix instead of rmail. I haven't set it up yet, but that is so trivial I guess it's already done.
This is not surprising. Sebastian Thrun[1], one of the founders of Udacity, specializes in robotic automobiles.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Thrun
I mostly work in C-like languages (and Python). Vanilla Emacs is just about all I need. I don't treat it as many people seem to use it, namely "enter Emacs once, then use it as an environment for hours."

Also, I learned Emacs in 1979, and it's pretty much wired into my muscle memory. Getting things back to an I-don't-have-to-think-about-it state is important, and whiz-bang features just get in the way most of the time.
That fire pole costs a lot less than the salary increase you'd need in order to achieve the same level of employee retention. Google has quite a bit of engineering talent; you don't want that talent to evaporate for the sake of some short-term cost savings. Your scheme will absolutely affect innovation: it will cause innovators to leave.

If you want to cut datacenter costs, reward engineers for impact, and include cost savings under your definition of impact. Engineers are pretty rational people and will respond to incentives.
they do. they really do. i've read your screed about this and i completely agree. absolutely appalling. in particular a marked inability to handle thread concurrency, which is pretty fatal to varnish.

however. given that tls is operationally important. and using an additional proxy causes a lot of configuration and performance headaches. isn't there any better path forward?
I don't believe those are equivalent scenarios, because it is much easier to request a fire pole in your office than to request production resources.
I remember getting into a long discussion with an engineering director at Google about "the entitled attitude" that engineers had. Their argument was that money spent on "lifestyle perqs" was money not spent on better computers or improved networking, or heaven forbid higher salaries where the engineers could spend the money on something for themselves.

They weren't wrong. But at the same time, they really weren't looking at it from the employee's perspective. Being a bit cheeky I mentioned that Google could save lots of money if they stopped heating and cooling the buildings. With the obvious counter argument that if the place was uncomfortable "everyone" would leave. But that is just as wrong. Not everyone would leave, only the people for whom working for Google wasn't as important as being comfortable at work. There were plenty of people who would sit there sweltering just to be "working at Google." And many of those people would do great work and build great things.

But the really good people, the people who constantly invent new things and have the skills to communicate their ideas and get them implemented, those people can work literally anywhere and if they can do what they want to do anywhere else, they will leave. So this "tax" of free soda and snacks is just a cost of doing business. And if you look at the revenue per employee, you do yourself no favor trying to maximize that number beyond the value that meets your net income numbers.

The other thing that a number of middle managers miss is that once you are paying a person more than their "wants" level, you get more loyalty and commitment spending additional dollars on snacks and sodas etc than you do on cash.
There are plenty of places you can camp legally (and freely). All along the Appalachian Trail, for a start.
If using software keyboard, Hacker Keyboard works great!

Otherwise, the Logitech K380 Multi-Device Bluetooth Keyboard ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0148NPH9I/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_l... ) is great.
It could be manipulated onhover
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency_wage
Ah, a "deletionist". A person who uses its own intelligence to justify what other people can't do, rather than trying to be (IMHO) actually helpful and using intelligence to figure out how to do stuff.

Every human institution seems to get overrun by those, eventually.
RMS is no longer a maintainer of GNU Emacs.
I'd start with Willowbrook, which was a rallying point for getting rid of institutional care.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willowbrook_State_School

It's a really complex and sad issue.
True, but as far as I know California has never funded homeless programs at the state level. The only thing listed in the 2015 budget is:

"Housing Support Program — The Budget contains $35 million General Fund for
CalWORKs Housing Support Program services, an increase of $15 million, which
provides additional support to CalWORKs families for whom homelessness is a
barrier to self‐sufficiency."

Which leaves medicaid spending, which according to my previous source only 20% of the homeless population in SF receive. Assuming medicaid pays the same amount poer person as in NYC that would bring the per capita homeless expenditure to about $35000.