skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"stalling food and medical supplies"

That's what the employer knowingly brought into risk when they decided to run understaffed to increase profits.
> a more stable language like Go, Rust, Clojure, or Elixir

Uhhh..? A more trendy language? Are we really saying that Elixir is more stable than Python?
Someone doesn't realize they actually have to do work, even if a language is turing complete.
I would guess that he just doesn't want to update his courses.

EDIT: https://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ex0.html

Wow - python 2.5.1. He even does not update to 2.7.

Last login: Sat Apr 24 00:56:54 on ttys001
~ $ python
Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Feb 6 2009, 19:02:12)
Especially because, if someone's been buying fakes all their life, how could they possibly know what real Aloe is like?
Apart from his argument that Python 3 is not turing complete, which has been torn apart in the comments, can someone evaluate the other arguments. Are the other criticisms valid? If not, why?
> In each time step, the solver performs an "advection" update followed by a "pressure projection" step. This "pressure projection" step involves solving a "Poisson equation," which is computationally intensive and usually requires an iterative solver. Instead of directly solving the Poisson equation, they train a ConvNet regression model to infer these "pressure projections."

Yea, I mean, for applications like solving a Poisson equation, it seems like it would be cheaper to just solve the damn linear system. The system is going to be fairly sparse with a nice, well understood distribution of non-zeros and one should be able to make the linear solve fly. I'm curious where the tipping point is, however, between just solving the linear system and pushing everything through a CNN.
Those are exactly the things I've been frustrated by. Attempting to break everything down into small chunks with well defined entry and exit criteria can easily be more time consuming and lead to more analysis paralysis than just giving an experienced and trusted team member a goal and letting them work toward a solution, with lots of communication as they go. I suppose YMMV applies, as usual with this sort of thing!
Thanks for more fake news.
The enzymes in aloe reduce inflammation, increase blood flow to the damaged tissue, provide antibacterial compounds to avoid infection and stimulate cell production to speed up healing.

Now I understand the above can be both read fairly (i.e. similarly honey has antibacterial properties and has been used to treat wounds from ancient times through the Civil War) or unfairly (magical claims aloe is a cure all). Moreover, I am not claiming a single application is going to magically make a burn disappear. However, the same way one might continually apply neosporin, a burn cream and/or vitamin E to a burn to obtain certain benefits one might see similar benefits of those three from an aloe plant.

Certainly it is a lot more difficult to test the benefits of aloe on a grease burn rather than a sunburn where aloe can be continually applied in certain areas, sparingly in certain areas and not at all in others. Think of a sunscreen where someone uses sunscreen on half their body and nothing on the other half, then in reverse advertising aloe, by no means am I saying its a 1:1 but the difference would be no less noticeable.
Yeah, if you're referring to a mediocre replacement which no one uses, I guess there's diaspora: https://www.joindiaspora.com/
They've got some coupons ready for Black Friday too;
https://www.namesilo.com/Support/Promotions-and-Coupons
Well, we are on a realm of speculation and subjectivity; but I beg to differ; the majority of people (at least the ones that I talk to) do not even acknowledge that their vote does not count and instead believe that it is a democracy; that is why people go out to vote.
I really have nothing other to say than this: I think it would be better if people were educated about our constitutional system; and it would send a stronger message if NO ONE voted for president; then they can worry about the change they want all within their states! This whole, vote for this president because he/she is the lesser evil is what is destroying this country. . .

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge	natural to party dissension, which in different ages & countries has perpetrated the most	horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. The disorders & miseries, which result,	gradually incline the minds of men to seek security & repose in the absolute power of an	Individual: and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more	fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation,	on the ruins of Public Liberty.” (Washington 1976)
This is what the author doesn't get- the fact that Python 2 makes no distinction between bytes-like objects and string-like objects is a bug, not a feature. He finds his code so awful to migrate because he has built it on a contrary assumption.
I'm not a Trump supporter or a Redditor...
You can't change your existing password in apple if you forget your secret question/answer. I gave gibberish to these secret pet/school. Now I am unable to change my password ;-)
The "Don't use it because people don't use it" argument bugs me. That's a valid argument when you're a CTO or Employee 0 picking a language that a thousand people will be using for fifteen years. Putting it on a tutorial site with good google juice, on the other hand, is a sad self-fulfilling prophecy.
Python still has the best libraries of any language, and almost every library has full Python 3 support. The real issue is with legacy codebases that are going to need to upgrade from Python 2.7 to 3.5 or else switch to PyPy by 2020
Not just without California, but even without Los Angeles County:

| Popular vote totals: | |
| Clinton | 60900953 |
| Trump | 60328203 |
|-----------------------------------------------+----------|
| Los Angeles County votes: | |
| Clinton | 1654626 |
| Trump | 542591 |
|-----------------------------------------------+----------|
| California votes: | |
| Clinton | 5931283 |
| Trump | 3184721 |
|-----------------------------------------------+----------|
| Popular vote totals minus Los Angeles County: | |
| Clinton | 59246327 |
| Trump | 59785612 |
|-----------------------------------------------+----------|
| Popular vote totals minus California: | |
| Clinton | 54969670 |
| Trump | 57143482 |
Checked exceptions is definitely cruft. Java is also has the advantage of trying to be less things than c++. It's not a systems language and it's hardly even a desktop applications language anymore. Java has the same niches as ruby and python more than c++.
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather the vast majority of govt be significantly reduced or removed... but its about a direction towards that ideal... Also, My stances on a few issues wouldn't hold up in the republican camp, same for Dems....
NASA’s EM-drive still a WTF-thruster
Node is an interpreter for the v8 JavaScript engine and it uses a language named JavaScript. There isn't a language named node :)

I've done Python about as long as you but also like Golang for things Python is awful at.
This looks like a great summary, thank you.

My reading of [2] is that the model only needs to be retrained if the environmental boundary changes. For example, to handle objects that do not fit within the current boundary. Since I imagine scale matters here, and you couldn't simply make everything inside smaller. Internal geometry such as replacing the castle with a car does not appear to require retraining.
How do you propose we change the laws in China? Lead a revolution?
There's good criticism here, but I can't help but feel the rest is mostly Zed flipping out.

Regarding 2to3 not being flawless: agree, could be better.

Regarding core libraries: agree, but the same problem exists on Python 2 (different core libraries have different levels of compatibility for taking string or unicode as arguments), so I don't see how this can be a recommendation against 3 specifically.

Regarding new string types and handling, this has been discussed over and over again everywhere on the web, and boils down to people freaking out at unicode by default. This one does a good job explaining everything: http://www.diveintopython3.net/strings.html and this one does a good job at showing what you get w/ Py3 (not limited to new string types): https://speakerdeck.com/pyconslides/python-3-dot-3-trust-me-...

Regarding complaints about how many string interpolation methods there are: the `f` method relies on local scope (which is prone to introducing bugs), so it's actually pretty gimmicky compared to `.format` (which takes an explicit data structure as parameter). I would do the opposite and only teach `.format` to beginners since it leads to better code.

Regarding Turing completeness: fun.
The difference between a programmer and a computer scientist.
Javascript certainly has. Most people don't even seem to be writing javascript in javascript anymore.
FWIW, I do recommend Zed's book. Many, many people have benefitted from Python The Hard Way.
Don't hitch your wagon this this garbage. If you think the 2 to 3 transition is a harbinger of doom, write your own blog post about it.
I mean it sounds very nice and fancy - but loop semantics and conditional jumps have nearly nothing to do with what he's talking about.
So you're saying that doctors are only capable of evaluating personal experience, and not evidence collected by others? That puts a whole new spin on the medical profession.
Exactly, I am not claiming sunscreen doesn't work, I am just saying you can find such claims on the internet - same as claims aloe does not work - sunscreen obviously works and is easily testable as you point out -which was my whole point as well - and same is true of easily testing aloe on sunburns. That is why I claim anyone who denies aloe effectiveness on sunburns doesn't have personal experience and I would make the same claims about people who doubt sunscreen.
When you run a global communication platform, you should be held to a higher standard.

Communication platforms are an oligopoly. When they each have censorship baked in the cake, the free-market-user-choice argument doesn't hold up very well.
Interesting how this unicode string thing in py3 seems so similar to php6. Which was canned because it turned out to be a flawed design, and php7 continued where php5 left off (fortunately!)
Very much so!

The two tasks are surprisingly interchangable. I once worked on a project where we used a statistical MT approach to "translate" between image features and captions--and I don't think we were the only ones trying such things.

In a pleasing bit of symmetry, the attentional network used here looks like it was initially developed for image captioning.
nope it should be

print(f"Howdy {x}")

It's a new python 3.6 feature called f-strings/string interpolation

https://docs.python.org/3.6/reference/lexical_analysis.html#...

That said in python3 print is a function not a statement and requires parenthesis so he still has a typo.
I run Repl.it (https://repl.it) and I have an interesting stat. Python3 has been loaded 3.6x more times than Python2 (500k vs 140k) just in November, and it's been used in 5x more classrooms (https://repl.it/classroom).

* two caveats:

- we have Python3 listed on the languages page whereas you'd have to click around or search to get to Python2.

- we have slightly more features on Python3 like live pylint and ability to use modules
No, he's stating that they have a cognitive bias. One that is not easily realized.
Inside Intel’s Strategy to Integrate Nervana Deep Learning Assets
Do you think that there's anything to the idea of compartmentalization? For example, suppose people in one area were so homogeneous in circumstances and concerns that they were of universally the same political opinion. By pandering to that one area, a candidate could win a large number of votes. In contrast, to win votes all across the country, a candidate would need to have wider appeal, taking into account the concerns of the wider population.

It seems like the electoral college helps compartmentalize the votes, preventing an "overflow" of opinion in certain areas from outweighing the wider population's combined opinion.
Ask HN: How to offer sweat equity
I have an early stage startup, I am wanting partner(s) and I want to offer sweat equity rather than remuneration. The problem is that is only early stage based on the launch date. Not based on the amount of time I have worked on it. I have worked on it for about 11,000 hours.

(most certainly not a MVP)

I currently own 100%, but of course I will still be working on it...so that others and I can earn more shares I could say my 11,000 hours equals 50% with the other 50% 'up for earning' by further sweat?

So that would mean 22,000/100 = 220 hours for 1% stake. Given that the company currently has zero revenue and is only just starting to bring on users I am not sure if I will get any interested parties based on that. Are there better ways of doing this?
Wow, this guy seems really pissed off.

But I must admit, it is nice having all those python developers distracted by working on another language and leaving 2.7 in its current state of perfection. I wonder if this has actually helped increased the use of 2.7, not having endless "improvements" tacked on. It sounds like this could be one of those weird laws of the computer age. I dub thee "Shaw's Law".
Wow, that's.. disgusting. And also damaging to their own hiring practices, by the sound of it.
Recall that even when Google was censoring, they displayed a prominent message on each page showing that results were removed by government diktat.

But even that went against Google's ethics, so rather than comply with the censorship regime, they withdrew from the market.

Will Facebook prominently disclose when posts are censored?
Yeah - that's a lot of links for one point - Wallmart.ca.

Which is cool, and doesn't surprise me.

But I don't see the trend lines of Scala heading in the direction they need to be in such that it becomes and incumbent language.

I don't see it as having enough disruptive power to break into the Javascript/C/C++/Java or even C# club.

My own experience is with Scala is that there is just way, way to much 'change' for some added value.

I wish they could make some tweaks to Java to incorporate some elements of Functional programming and I would be happy.

And before you blow up, it's possible to mix both styles, obviously Scala itself is an example of that.

A specific example: a lot of FP comes along with how collections, lists, maps etc. are managed and used. Lodash/underscore provides a lot of that for JS and makes a lot of JS 'functional-like'. If Java had such libraries with the mechanisms to use them (first class functions - Lambda's are not quite that) - then Java would be a lot better. Anyhow - to get the 'good things' about FP I don't think you need an entirely new linguistic paradigm.
There was an amusing discussion last week in a Facebook group about this exact topic:

"So there were 7 applicants and I rejected 7 because they sent in their demo assigments in Python 2.7.

Come on people, its nearly 2017!"

https://www.facebook.com/groups/hackathonhackers/permalink/1...
Nice piece of work and counts as "implementing Star Trek in the present". Now I just need a nice pair of noise cancelling over the ear headphones that let me hear english spoken no matter where I am :-)
Choosing The Right Front End Framework: Angular2 vs. React vs. Polymer
I have too, but I learned Python in a time where learning Python 2 was still politically correct.
I honestly don't get how this is still even an issue, if you're stuck with libraries that haven't been migrated to Python 3.x you have my sympathy - but I have had 0 need to touch any Python 2.x code in over 3 years - in fact, all of the Python code I have deployed at work is Python 3.x only.

Python 3 is a non-issue in my eyes, the only reason I don't use it more is because there's only one other developer on my team that knows Python well enough to maintain anything if I get hit by a bus - Python is "weird" for everyone else because we're mostly a .Net shop, so unless I'm writing an ansible module I use Kotlin and Spring-Boot or ASP.NET so my team can easily pick it up in the "snuxoll gets hit by a bus" scenario.
I wouldn't be so quick to throw around that term. The reason many, including myself, dislike the term censorship as applied to private entities is because it equivocates the threat between censors.

If Facebook prevents me from communicating something because they don't like it, the ramification is that I simply post it elsewhere and distribute it there.

If the government prevents me from communicating something because they don't like it, the ramification is that I have no outlet for it that does not come with the threat of violence, in the form of jail.

Very different outcomes.

At the point in which Facebook = Government in terms of state monopolized communications channel with government enforcement mechanisms then this definition would fit. It is however, despite it's popularity, nowhere near that nor reasonably possible.
The fact that two styles or concepts are formally dual does not make them equally practical or useful in all circumstances.

Consider: in calling conventions, the continuation passing style is dual to the "direct" calling convention (i.e., call stack with return values); the call-by-name style is dual to call-by-value style; Lambda Calculus and Turing Machines are dual in their ability to compute all effectively calculable functions.

These dualities do not mean it's equally practical to build systems in both ways. Sometimes one approach ends up being more practically useful.

Most programmers prefer to use the direct calling convention, and find complex continuation passing style to be difficult to read and maintain. JavaScript programmers may be familiar with the pain of CPS due to excessive use of callbacks (not strictly CPS but has similar drawbacks). Similarly, writing code purely in call-by-name style can be confusing and have difficult to predict performance impacts (e.g., Haskell lazy evaluation semantics).

In their article the article "On the Duality of Operating System Structures", Lauer and Needham present a similar conclusion [3]:

> "The principal conclusion we will draw from these observations is that the considerations for choosing which model to adopt in a given system [...] [are] a function of which set of primitive operations and mechanisms are easier to build or better suited to the constraints imposed by the machine architecture and hardware."

In that passage they are describing message passing vs. procedure call systems, and I interpret this to be their acknowledgment that, though the systems are dual, one architecture or another is more appropriate in certain circumstances.

Getting back to our original topic: this thread was about the decision of a Rust library to offer async or sync IO as its choice of primary primitive. I think async is the better general-purpose choice, because it's clean, simply, and straightforward to expose a synchronous interface on top of an async interfaces with futures; and the other way around is messy and difficult.

Can you elaborate on the lightweight co-routine library that can be used to convert anything synchronous into async? I'm curious about that, because Rust previously had support for coroutines (green threads), and decided to remove them due to a number of problems [1]. Meanwhile, Rust developers were able to devise a zero-cost futures abstraction on top of asynchronous IO [2]. Unlikely the problematic green threads strategy, this approach doesn't impose any complicated constraints on the systems that use it (FFI requirements), and doesn't add runtime overhead.

What co-routine library would you recommend that avoids the downsides in [1]?

[1] https://github.com/aturon/rfcs/blob/remove-runtime/active/00... describes some pretty tricky challenges.

[2] https://aturon.github.io/blog/2016/08/11/futures/

[3] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2948/a0d014852ba47dd115fcc7...
> The strings in Python 3 are very difficult to use for beginners. In an attempt to make their strings more "international" they turned them into difficult to use types with poor error messages. Every time you attempt to deal with characters in your programs you'll have to understand the difference between byte sequences and Unicode strings.

The author has this exactly backwards. It is Python2 that makes the weird distinction between the string and the unicode type. Strings (and bytes) in Python3 are done (almost) right. (I say "almost" because Python bytes are constrained to be 8-bits wide, but that is not a serious problem.)

He also clearly doesn't understand Turing-completeness.
"The classic way of solving online financial crime is to 'follow the money' - but when you can no longer do this, it is very hard to find out who is behind it,"

Surely ATM's can record every note serial number issued therefore large subsequent transactions with the cash would be easy to identify.
Javascript is a colloquial name for what is formally known as ECMAScript. There isn't a language named JavaScript :)
There are several policy areas where doctors feel they have more to add than they actually do: tobacco discussion, whether or not bicycle helmets should be legally required, euthanasia/abortion issues (the moral aspects of it, not the technical ones), ...

I think it's a remnant from when doctors were part of the 'upper class' of the village (or even city), along with the priest, the school teacher, etc. Whereas today, in more educated circles at least in my observation, doctors are just body mechanics. They derive most of their status from their pay. (Much less so e.g. in the small town I'm from, where doctors are still respected just for being a doctor - but are paid less).

Edit to add: I'm not going to modify my comment above because that invalidates all the responses, but it seems like all responses are taking the wrong message from my post: I'm not making some sort of moral judgement on the work of doctors, what I'm saying is that doctors aren't any longer so special that they're part of the intellectual elite (and hence are consulted on topics being their expertise) just for being a doctor. Sure most doctors do work that's beneficial to many people, but so do teachers, and I don't think anyone is going to claim that teachers have high status in society (because of it, or at all).
Why would you say that? The main Python project I work on is 271k LOC... no problems here.
You can make a profit and do the right thing. Sometimes doing the right thing actually helps you make more profit.

I'd guess that withdrawing from China was a net loser for Google overall, but in my case it strengthened my brand loyalty to Google.
What did you find difficult about Python 3?

I switched around 3.1, though granted I was still a novice programmer then and didn't have to port any legacy code. I had so many issues with Unicode in Python 2 (some may have been my own ignorance at the time, but with 3 a lot of those issues magically disappeared). Since text processing / NLP is my main focus, it was an easy decision to switch.
> Suddenly print is a function?

from __future__ import print_function

Now you've got print function in python2.

> 'yield from' won't be available on the py2 branch?

And 2.6 doesn't get set literals. And 2.5 doesn't get "with" statements. And ... There's got to be a cutoff somewhere. Or we'd just have an eternal 1.0 with all the features backported to it.