skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I really enjoy Go (I'm an 8k) but I have to disagree with this. Curing diseases-- AIDS, smallpox, guinea worm, chicken pox-- are accomplishments have impact people lives and directly help humanity get more value out our citizens.

Fun fact: did you know that kids don't get chicken pox these days? They all get immunized, so they don't go through the rite of passage that everyone who's 20+ plus has gone through. And it'll soon be forgotten. Which brings me to: Just because people forget about a disease we've cured doesn't invalidate that good that was done by the people solving that problem. The general public doesn't know about _most_ good things that were done to bring about the world we live in. There's still value in helping anyway. Doctors & researchers don't ask to be worshipped.

Even if we strongman Go and Chess and say that they are great at sharpening & maintaining one's mental facilities, have been integral and beneficial to military thought, and are immensely enjoyable, I don't think that the value of solving the Go and Chess problems compares to curing diseases.
I didn't down vote you, but was tempted, so I'll explain.

Yes, you are stating a true fact. However, I'm pretty sure that the vast number of people who see these things do not consider the distinction you draw vastly more deceptive than, well, any other advertising out there, and much less so than most. Compare with, say, Comcast, and this is a model of clarity.

An additional reason is that it is somewhat derailing to rant about what many would think to be trivial quibbles about advertising copy in the middle of what is otherwise a discussion about the usefulness of the books, ORA, etc.
Are you too old to be brilliant?
Getting 160MHz makes things more expensive, technology wise. Why not starting in a cheaper technology to be open source?
>> First, the Manhattan Project itself was sui generis. There is very little reason to believe that this model does, in fact, generalize widely outside of the basic and applied sciences.

No. It was a basic question of practical physics. It was an effort to translate theoretical knowledge already proven in laboratories into a working product at scale. The innovations were definitely costly, but essentially rather incremental and straightforward. That was much of the reason it needed to be done in a hurry: eventually someone would do it.

Fusion power is in the same place. The theory works in the lab, we need to translate that into a working model at practical scales. Eventually someone will crack the problem. A Manhattan-style push would accelerate that date, hopefully to within our lifetimes.
I did XSLT years ago and had far less of a problem learning my way around stylesheet syntax, and that was that bad old XML, don't you know. I was looking into Jolt just a week or two ago and ended up having a really rough time. I think if there was a more deliberate tutorial, it might be easier to learn. But the Javadocs and the hairball of example transformations were something I found confusing.
I'm trying very hard not to criticize anything in these comments. I'm really just trying to summarize the description that article provides. It's not like I'm uncovering a hidden subtext, I think the authors would generally agree with my summary.

I'm not using white nationalist as an insult, I'm calling Breitbart white nationalist because that accurately describes the beliefs that they cater to. Maybe Steve Bannon wouldn't call himself that because it's obviously a politically and emotionally charged term, but if he agrees with the views described in this article, he is a white nationalist.
According to my previous eye doctor, most patients just fail to fully cooperate with and follow the conditions that exist before and after the LASIK surgery and that's why they end up with bad side effects.
The Sony thing was a bit jarring. I suppose I wouldn't expect people who hang out on a site called "hacker news" to agree that Sony, Target, and Yahoo set the gold standard for software development ;)

I do think the underlying point, though, is a good one - this is a difficult field, and success eludes people who spend their lives working on it and companies that spend a lot of money hiring them (or at least attempting to).

I like the author's notion that programmers would have a greater role and status in firms: "Coders are not used in law firms the way they are in most businesses. They are seen as tools to get things done, not as an integral and necessary part of law firm operations, let alone management." That I like this is no surprise, seeing as I am a software developer myself. Unfortunately, I don't think the "integral and necessary" part of a firm actually reflects the reality of open offices, scrum, limited autonomy, and short career spans.

Oh one thing - although the author talks about "expert technologists", I don't see anything here about requiring a degree, nor do I agree that the author has advocated for institutionalizing incompetence. I think he's trying to argue that software development is sufficiently complicated that asking lawyers to become programmers is on a par with asking programmers to suddenly become lawyers. I'd say the thesis here is: software is actually very difficult to do well, and the best solution is to integrate programmers into the firm - this author even advocates doing it at an equity level! Sounds great to me, though honestly I don't really see it happening (like I said, I think the author greatly overestimates the extent to which this occurs outside law firms. Organizations are often very resistant to providing this status and integration to software developers, though some have managed to do this, with success).
Most of dev boards for hobby-end microcontrollers in the market are using high level language to easy the micro programming, is any high level language such as C supported?
There is a german word for your behaviour.

i-Tüpferl-Reiter
http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/i_Tuepferl_Reiter

Which roughly translates to: The need to make something better even if it is already as good as it gets
Nothing to do with sports, but contacts in general carry some risk due to things like eye infections.
The deep learning AMI now has both CUDA and CUDNN installed.
This is why you should never embed user created SVGs in your site.
Good to know! thanks
Right, but the problem with EPUB and Mobi is that I haven't really seen technical books done well with them, with various tables, diagrams, charts, etc. These are presented much better when they have a human eye lay them out on the page.

That's where a multi-format PDF would come in handy -- you could still have a human editor lay out the pages for 2 or 3 different page sizes, and then the reader would pick the appropriate one (given the constraints of the reader device and font size).
I landed on the same side of the risk/value equation. Although my ophthalmologist showing me a picture of a guy who's eyeball exploded from a skiing accident may have also influenced me (I like to ski, and I do, on occasion experience rapid unscheduled deceleration associated with attempting to ski on my face :-)
If you write something for Couchbase (which PouchDB supports) I'd be interested to hear about it.
The issue is contrast not total light levels. https://www.polarization.com/water/water.html

So, it can actually be much easier to see someone with dark clothing when I have sunglasses on.
538 does a better job of debunking this than I ever could:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking...
Truthfully so, it's ~5800 words. Even at "top" skimming score of 1000 words per minute, that's still almost 360 seconds to read it.
I mean, a lot of senior people here don't touch the mouse or keyboard all day, they're just constantly in meetings, so I think there's some truth to that.
Why that level of paranoia?
Hopefully they have something like the modern micros which includes USB interfaces onchip...
It's designed to be modular for ease of development by Apple folks. Whether they extend the benefits of that modularity to you, the user, is entirely case-by-case --
and the default answer is 'no'.
Is anyone here using ortho-k lenses? I've replaced my usual soft contacts and been wearing them for half a year now and it's so much easier on the eyes. Although I still see slight halos and by the evening my vision is noticeably worse, I can't complain. And I have an option to undo all this, unlike some poor LASIK patients.
such smart. impressed. "p2" "p3". knows unique terminology. literal genius. so smart. A dozen programming languages just for fun? You definitely know what you're talking about and have very worthwhile contributions. People should listen to you.

I like what you said about self-obsessed project. It's clear that you have a very well reasoned position, not just opinion. What you say makes irrefutable sense.
Ask HN: What problems could a startup solve for you?
I'm trying to figure out my next project and wondering what problems the HN community has that a startup could solve.
I agree that it doesn't have to be in any way mystical and that it comes to redefining what's fundamental and what's merely constructed or emergent (although it's a very tricky term). In the panpsychist approach neither matter nor consciousness can be reduced to the other one.

For more engineering approach to the problem, there's lot we can do. One way would be to study in more and more details the correlates of consciousness to understand the "linking" mechanism better. Anil Seth describes this approach here: https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-....

On the other hand, if consciousness indeed is a fundamental attribute of reality, we should extend the 'engineering' to cover also the 'mind' part of reality. This is exactly what meditation is - to train the mind so that it can see more and more clearly all the components of conscious experience until it reaches the bottom. As a result you come up with a number of 'edge cases' - interesting states that can be used to reason about this reality conceptually.

There are eg. 'experience of space itself', experience of consciousness (so called immaterial Jhanas) or finally experience caused by calming the unconscious mind to the extent that it stops projecting any content into conscious mind, while the latter is still operating. This (supposedly) leads to realisation by the mind itself that the 'experienced world' is nothing but its creation. Of course we all can understand it conceptually, but this experience leads to permanent change in perception (you can't "unsee it") which becomes as objective as the human mind can possibly be. Meaning, that it realises in every moment that each experience is its own creation.

It may all seem mystical, exotic or plain crazy, but there's no other way to understand the mind than through the mind itself, if the discussed hypothesis is true.
Reducing road deaths
When there's such a blatant and obvious breach of the law, in this case a fraud, against a large number of citizens (all the people who bought the product), then shouldn't the government themselves wade in and initiate legal proceedings - with an independent judiciary what's the problem with that?

Surely there is a government department that covers product fraud? In the UK we have Trading Standards (and the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) [which might be a NGO?]) that would both be in part responsible to take action on the consumers behalf ... presumably there's some action needed in the UK now, can't imagine this is only in USA.

Mind you from the article it sounds like the fraud is in quantity of Aloe Vera added; that these products may have 1ppm of Aloe Vera or something??
RediSQL, a redis module that integrate SQLite
While we're discussing the dragging behavior, you also can't click on the bottom ~1/3 of the pane, seemingly because of the little cardboard/vr goggle graphic in the bottom corner.
I'm not denying the climate changes.

Please show me the reports that include data on solar and lunar activity. Extremely few and far between and you know it.
Have you looked at integration with taskwarrior? A bidirectional sync for tasks would be very handy. Look at asanawarrior for an example.
In those 30 years, many young liberals will turn into old conservatives. New liberals will be born to replace the ones who became conservatives.

This divide isn't going anywhere.
That's not what it is. It's not a subprocess. Nature is exactly what the economy is, limited resources and optimizations to utilize those resources. Each company in our system is an animal. That uses finite resources to continue to survive, as a by-product think of shit, it produces goods that we desire. It also has smaller entities like humans and other companies that feed off the energy that it acquires and consumes, like employees. These companies fight for survival in the market place where they gather more energy by producing things. Energy in our system is money, it's the most basic form that can be consumed by all entities. In real nature, you can't consume energy directly you have to go through other organisms, acquire them, to get energy. Anyway, this is not some sort of thesis, it's just an observation, that I want to throw out and maybe someone will read it and be inspired to formulate a thesis.

Another observation, the reason people are so miserable in the economy is the same reason people are miserable in nature. Civilization was a means to escape nature, but we have recreated nature in a completely different domain on top of abstractions. The economy, Capitalism, is nature that's recreated. That's also why people want Socialism and Communism, to escape from this new brutal "nature" again.
Culture of Quality
I think the author is strawmanning a bit here. The central premise they're attacking is that tech should not be called upon to solve social problems, and they assume this is what the pull quote at the top is implying. They then spend the body of the essay arguing that social problems are intractable to a top down approach, technological rationality is subject to the same problems as government bureaucracy, etc.

However, one could more charitably interpret the quote as saying there are lots of TECHNOLOGIES that would produce social good, which are underfunded - alternative energy, carbon capture, distributed social networking, etc. Ycombinator seems to agree, given their recent focus on nuclear.
Show HN: How to Upload an Image to Firebase Storage with React Native
Headphones could be vulnerable
Fake news is just the beginning, there is much more ahead
Supercapacitors Batteries charges in seconds without degrading
OpenBSD Foundation Welcomes First Iridium Donor: Smartisan
Great, now if this escapes from the lab we will have Jellyfish with frickin' lasers on their heads! :-)

I struggle to imagine a solid use for this effect (although it suppose it would provide an evolutionary advantage to e.coli that could lase their food before eating it.) Quantum dots I get, high efficiency LEDs and lasers.
C# 7 language design dilemmas
Show HN: Slick React Native ListView Feed with Cacheable Images
Having lived in the UK for 8 years now. I would say this sentiment is better put as 'be sensible'. The knock on effect from being sensible is 'it just isn't done'.
Sometimes this simply doesn't work - it's bizarre but the apple menu is actually part of the App that's running it.
Trump DepSecDef Prospect Urges Federal Cyber to Go to Analog Circuit Design
I've seen halos for as long as I can remember. Never had any eye surgery of any kind, and doctors tell me my eyes are fine. It's kind of annoying, but no big deal.

Wish I knew what caused it though.
You might be interested in coeffects. Just like monads can be used in a language like Haskell to model effectful operations, you can use the dual of monads, comonads, to model the dual of effects, coeffects!

Coeffects can be used to represent the "context" of a program, which includes things like permissions or capabilities that the program may have access to. They provide a fascinating way of modeling all kinds of information that is traditionally not handled by even powerful type systems like OCaml's or Haskell's.

You can read a lot more about the topic on Tomas Petricek's website: http://tomasp.net/coeffects/

I especially recommend this short article from 2014: http://tomasp.net/blog/2014/why-coeffects-matter/
Had lasik about 5 years ago (at 30) and still believe it was a great decision. Yes, I don't have great night vision, but wearing glasses or contacts had the same effect (but much, much worse), so overall it's a win. Not having to deal with glasses or contacts is such an improvement, it was worth every penny.
My guess is most people thought the current small claims process would be the tool people would use. Maybe it worked when it was a small portion of the workforce, but now as more people do freelancing, it makes sense to have a dedicated state for them to seek redress.
I changed it to query from [bigquery-public-data:github_repos.contents] instead, and before I execute the query it says "Valid: This query will process 1.68 TB when run.".

Queries are $5/TB [0].

So a bit less than 10 bucks. :)

Edit: brb, that's totally worth it.

[0]: https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/pricing
I've done most of my hiking in Iceland, weather's very erratic, just because it's pouring doesn't mean you need to seek shelter, it's just rain.

I found that everyone I hiked with who tried to waterproof their backpack would end up with things soaked anyway. Frequently having to open the bag in the rain means the insides inevitably get soaked, it's much harder to even semi-waterproof a much larger area than having a waterproof duffel bag for the small stuff.

Gives you a lot of flexibility too, e.g. I've crossed rivers and then just dragged the backpack over to the other side via rope.
Ditto, today I'm 1 year to the day after my PRK surgery. The only side effect I had was dry-eye, and man is it a pain. I can't ride my bike without some form of eye protection (sunglasses, or clear goggles). 2-3 times per week I wake up with severely, painfully dry eyes.

All that said, it was worth it and I wouldn't go back. Being able to see without glasses/contacts is a huge improvement on quality of life.

+1 for PRK over Lasik
Via "voter ID laws did it", "Crosscheck did it", and a few other equally dubious theories, yes. See my comment in the other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13021602
Mine have always been free after insurance.
Airbnb Settles New York State Suit, Focusing on City
This is as good a time as any to recommend Orson Welles's mesmerizing documentary, "F for Fake" about the now infamous art forger Elmyr de Hory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmyr_de_Hory
I too longed for the day that I could have laser surgery. My eyes didn't particularly enjoy soft contacts, and I did not like wearing (even fashionable) glasses.

But I held it off because of the downsides, such as relapses in eye prescription strength, the constant need to water your eyes and permanent visual artifacts. That and the not inconsiderable price.

Very glad that I basically chickened out, because instead I discovered overnight vision correction contacts [1]. They are hard contact lenses you wear during the night, and they reshape your cornea during the night so that your my/hyperopia just dissappears during the day. During the day, it allows you to function with normal vision without any aid whatsoever.

It's really quite amazing for me. Downsides are a halo effect (but one that actually diminishes to the point that I don't notice), and the fact that you have to wear contacts during the night, but I much prefer that to wearing any during the day. I can happily recommend trying this before considering more permanent solutions such as eye surgery if you fit in the eye prescription range that it works for.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthokeratology / apparently marketed as "Ortho-K" in NA?
This post here is my life. I've had glasses for basically as long as I can remember and I hate them. I don't feel comfortable touching my eyes and stuff for contacts though so I reckon laser eye surgery is probably an option for me, maybe in five to ten years.

p.s. disposable wipes with rubbing alcohol are great for keeping them clean (although terrible for the environment), and getting a non-reflective coating definitely helps keep the effects of the smudging to a minimum.
I'm not saying it's fundamentally different in the sense of animals not having having an instinct to control objects. Property takes that instinct and adds to it a layer of organized coercion to enforce possessory interests.

(I guess I kinda missed the context of the post a bit further up, which suggests there isn't a possessory instinct in nature, which is obviously incorrect.)
Has everyone forgot about Wikileaks and its treasure trove of information about Clinton conspiring with DNC to drop Bernie Sanders out of the race? And that was just one of many things that were leaked. Why bother with malware when you can just dig up dirt on a candidate and release it to public? Don't get me wrong. I know Russia could do the hack but why would you bother with something so high-risk?
Thanks for the link. I figure you're probably right, but you never know when someone is going to surprise you with something interesting. I try to give everyone a fair hearing if they care to put a decent argument together :)
https://buffer.com/ -> https://haash.io/
How to Prevent Hair Loss or Baldness
A similar discussion that might interest some of you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11956101
Contacts seem way more dangerous. Eyes are immune privileged, a dirty contact lens can lead to a rapidly growing infection with permanent loss of visual acuity in a matter of days. That is the short term; in the long term, the reduced oxygen supply to your eyes may lead to excessive ingrowth of blood vessels into the cornea. They are permanent and can obscure vision once you accrue enough of them.
Tofurky-That Tofu Turkey  Beastie Boys Parody
You're assuming that losing a $10,000 bet is the same as experiencing some side affects years after having Lasik. It's not that clear-cut - you don't go blind. A fairer comparison might be a $10,000 bet only paying out $9,000, but while you play you get free drinks and a show, so maybe the trade-off is worth it.

I had Lasik about ten years ago. I just didn't like the inconvenience of glasses and contacts and taking them on/off all day when switching from a screen to driving/walking and back was straining.

I went in understanding that there was a risk night vision degradation in the future. But really, I'd likely have experienced that with age anyway.

To this day LASIK is the best money I've ever spent. I've got near-perfect vision and have since taken up many activities (flying, cycling, motorcycling) that, while they can be done with glasses, are much, much more convenient without them.
Even if security and fraud weren't issues, based on the voter suppression efforts of the last couple of years,I doubt the lawmakers would want everyone voting in such an easy manner.
Thank you for the kind words. I cannot comment on the performance hit yet but this is something I plan to examine soon. Based on experience I can guess that the performance decrease from using recursion could be about an order of magnitude or more for large arrays. Fortran really shines performance-wise when applied to heavy computations on very large multi-dimensional arrays - I don't think functional techniques should be applied in such cases. However, I think that Fortran programmers can benefit by applying functional techniques on parts of code that do a lot of complex logic but are not computationally heavy. Pareto principle is especially valid in HPC Fortran codes - most compute time is spent in a small % of code base. Those should be left alone.
Ira Smith Trustee and Receiver Inc
How to replace public SSH keys on your AWS EC2 instance