skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The ageism in this post is incredible. I speak as someone who is the "older relative" to a lot of people, and as someone who provides tech support to those same people. Characterizing older relatives as people who need help with cables is as ridiculous as characterizing millenials as "digital natives". My generation has been cabling shit together for decades, from stereos to VCR's to DVD's to quadraphonic sound systems to DVR's. If anything, cabling has gotten simpler these days. HDMI and USB cover a multitude of sins. Curb your ageism, please!
Why the lights don’t dim when we blink
Last year I really wanted to use ProtonMail, but the lack of SMTP and (at the time) inability to send plain text email were a big no-no for me.

So I switched from Gmail to Fastmail. I'm loving the service. The web app is pretty snappy and works really well. Even on mobile it is surprisingly responsive.

I find their UI beautiful and quite intuitive (don't read too much into this, as I am someone who really dislikes material design -- one of my grips with Gmail).

Really can't complain. I'd recommend Fastmail to anyone wanting a private mail service.
No, there are many deserts far older than human agriculture. Humans are reponsible for some desertification, but often that's just making existing deserts worse/larger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namib_Desert
That's great. I'm genuinely happy for you that you got out of rural NC, and I think your work ethic is to be commended greatly.

You worked hard, bettered your situation.

I still want to live in an America where no one needs to work that hard to have a comfortable life. Not luxurious, but comfortable. Anyone willing to put in 40 hours of work a week, they should be able to afford shelter in their region, have nice things every once in a while, have meat on the table regularly, etc.
A lot of people are asking what was in the October 2015 Autopilot 7.0 update. That was the introduction of autosteer. Automatic emergency braking (AEB) was initially released in 6.2, see https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/tesla_model_s_soft...

6.2 was announced in March, 2015.
Reads like a classic co-dependent personality? Always trying to stand out by eliciting sympathy for weakness. "Poor me, I can't do this stuff". Even to the point of faking choking. Isn't there some psychiatric examination to detect this early on?
How about Google let me install extensions on Chrome in Android?
Then I can penalize websites for any reason, including tracking me.
It should really be .gov.us rather than a top level domain.
Gotta hand it to GM. Early on when all the car companies, as well as Uber, Apple and Tesla were in a mad scramble to get their autonomous ducks in a row, GM made some very smart plays. It's great to see some evidence confirming my suspicion the GM/Cruise/Lyft arrangement is a serious contender. That's the most action packed L4 demo we've seen, it's like an edge case obstacle course.
Back in the mid '90s Digital's RDB (an early SQL database) had a companion product, Rdb Expert, which would analyze a live database over a period of time and make a script to set up its indices (ordered and hashed) and table placement rules to optimize a database.

It wasn't as good as a really good expert, but it was at least a 90% solution.

As I recall it was pretty good at getting a tuple and its one to many associated tuples into the same disk page so you needed fewer disk reads to access data. These were disks that were capable of about 35 seeks per second, so it really mattered.

(The drive I'm thinking of is the RA90. 1.2GB in a half of a 6U or so space. 32kg. 280 watts.)
A very similar calculation is why I left a startup recently and went into contracting. In many cases the realistic best case scenario from working at a startup isn't as good (financially speaking) as the non-startup alternatives.
This leads many people to extremely optimistic assessments of what the future worth of the startup may be (worth > $1billion)

There are many good reasons to join a startup but if the financial motivation is the main one then it's probably not the best route.
Brick and mortar stores were (and still are) extremely weak competition. That's why Amazon utterly crushed many of them and continues to do so. Not just small mom and pops either. Borders, which at one point was one of the largest bookstore chains in the nation, shuttered its doors because it didn't switch to an online model fast enough. Barnes and Noble at some point was in deep trouble as well.
Some only give you 2 or 3 article views then cut you off. But, of course, they still appear in search results.
This ignores what I have seen in my experience, which is that marketing teams - composed of the people who dictate what A/B tests the business should run - have little to no background in statistics, let alone any interest whatsoever in actually performing legitimate A/B tests.

It's often the case that the decision maker has already decided to move ahead with option A, but performs a minimal "fake" A/B test to put in their report as a way to justify their choice. I've seen A/B tests deployed at 10am in the morning, and taken down at 1pm with less than a dozen data points collected. The A/B test "owner" is happy to see that option A resulted in 7 conversions, with option B only having 5. Not statistically significant whatsoever, but hey let's waste developers' time and energy for two days implementing an A/B test in order to help someone else try to nab their quarterly marketing bonus.
I agree as well. Most of my fastest, "best" code is awful to look at because it has to be. It's full of crazy comments and hacks that were necessary for the hardware, language, and time usually. I think as processing power has increased, the low-level code is actually much less ugly. This is in no small part due to astronomical leaps in game design, engine design, and development time and other resources.

Still, in my experience any codebase that pushes a large amount of technical boundaries tends to be full of huge "WTF is this" moments that require explanation. It is an achievement if you can create a decently powerful codebase that can survive rapid changes and additions. It's much more common, but I've seen and worked on AAA codebases that would break if you blew on them.
Wow this is a really good comment. Great analogy with relationships and all.

Sometimes I think people naturally reflect who they are; i.e. a thief will naturally be aware/paranoid of other thieves snooping around his stuff. So I guess someone with trust issues probably sees himself as unfaithful?
The only thing a web site should need to “measure” is how long its visitors stay. I know that the instant I see any pop-up garbage, I immediately leave: I don’t care what the pop-up might say, I don’t care where they might’ve placed a little "X" to dismiss their message, I simply go BACK and I DON’T return.

Do not allow yourself to be bullied. Yes, services have some nonzero value but your time also has tremendous value and you should not undersell it by putting up with stupid crap. Any site that shoves things in your face is being disrespectful, it is wasting your time, and it is costing you, which is not OK. Let those sites die out.
Most users hate these pop-ups and cheer this move from Google. But let me add a little context to why these ads are so prevalent and why some companies view this move as Google abusing their power.

If you visit to any "guide" website like TripAdviser, Yelp, etc, these days on a mobile browser, you'll notice that the sites often barely let you do anything without downloading the native app. They all but refuse to let you see content and throw up "Download our app!" pop-ups everywhere.

By traditional logic, that seems insane. Why are they putting so many roadblocks between the user and the content? Surely that must be driving away users, right?

The reason for this behavior is that Google is systematically destroying the SEO traffic of these sites by adding their own competitive features to search result pages that appear above organic results.

If you search for a restaurant / hotel / flight on your phone, Google will often show its own custom widgets above the organic search results. It's not unusual that zero organic search results are visible "above the fold". The more Google does this, the more the share of clicks goes to them instead of to organic search results in these types of searches.

That means that even if these guide companies have #1 search rankings for every possible search term, they are seeing their SEO traffic plummet every month because they can't compete with Google's "above #1 result" placement. So as a defensive move, some companies are basically giving up on SEO traffic in the long term and trying to forcefully convert many visitors as possible into users who visit directly via a native app (and thus bypass Google). They know that every web user who doesn't download the native app is ever less likely to ever find them again via a search result page.

So to these companies, they see this change from Google as another anti-competitive move because Google is taking away one of their last remaining lifelines for user acquisition.

Personally, I find those full-page ads super annoying and hate them too and think they should go away. But like anything complicated, this isn't a simple black and white move to benefit users. It's also a strategic move that helps Google and hurts some competitors.
I am using FireFox Focus as well and AMP works for me.
Kind of scary that Google is so much of a gatekeeper to the entire internet that they can essentially decide which websites get visited and coerce them into submission.
I could probably build that. The remote for the washlet is just IR, bet it would be easy enough.
”I've always wondered why databases today still aren't capable of being self-tuning”

I think that’s because that only would be truly beneficial once you have huge tables, and you really wouldn’t want your database to suddenly decide “let me store this table order by its first column, as that seems to be faster for the queries I run now” if that choice leads to degraded performance for hours while the database reorganises tables, creates indexes, etc.

And it can get even worse; that decision might make the queries it runs _now_ go from “more than fast enough” to “way more than fast enough”, but also slow down the queries you run infrequently from “will do” to “glacial”.

I think we would be better of with a database that can easily generate a report showing queries run in the last months, with suggested schema changes and their estimated impact on performance. SQL Server has the query analyzer, but I think that could be taken much farther and be made easier to use.

Edit: I see that, while I wrote the above, jws wrote that Digital's RDB had something like that.
For your reference, a level 4 automated car will look something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhUX8qWFGc4

Imagine you are too fucked up to drive. Your car will be able to pick you up. Do you need Pepto Bismol too? Your car will pick it up from a drive through billed through your license plate. I'd give roughly 15~20 years for this to take place.
Not sure, but if something on the "web" is broken, my first go to is always the adblocker.
Milk is kept at the back of the store because that's the easiest please to put it from a logistics stand point. The truck the milk comes in pulls up to the back of the store and can immediately unload it into the giant refrigerated rooms at the back of the store. The fact that it helps "build the basket" by being at the back is a happy coincidence for the store.
In theory 2.10 will be released during 2017, and you'll surely see it posted here :)
I think the simplest approach is to use the cube root function. This is the simplest approach because it solves, over the reals, any equation of the form

x^3 = real number

That's the simplest solution. It works in every case. To me the answer is not important. The methodology is important. Giving a counter example is very much a different type of problem. Just about any method is valid in that type of problem.

Passing a class should mean more than I got a lot of answers correct. It should mean an understanding of the material. A college algebra student who solves x^3=27 in the aforementioned manner is lacking a fundamental understanding of the material. Now a third grader who reasons thusly, well that is impressive. The goal is not the right answer. It a demonstration of understanding and abilit appropriate to the level of the course.
> I'm not sure what you call this weird thing that HN does support.. but it's certainly not markdown.

Markaround.
This is where complexity theory comes in; you want a proof that is checkable in polynomial time; listing examples one by one to prove something is not such a proof. If instead the question asked, solve x^3 = 8192; a proof iterating from 0 uptil the cube root of 8192 wouldn't work, because that's exponential in the problem size.

Brute force search to get a counter example to the Reimann hypothesis produces a solution that is checkable in polynomial time; you just evaluate the Reimann-zeta function at the produced point.
Cows Were Fed Defective Skittles for Years Because It's Cheaper Than Corn
What is your concern about a 3rd party web service here?
Thanks. I've seen it but now that you mentioned I really liked to also understand what that means semantically:

5!:4 <'FB'

I see here:

http://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/dx005.htm

That every combination of two numbers means something special.

http://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/dx018.htm

Wow.
Which part? That he stole a massive amount of Intelligence .. not just pertaining to any domestic surveillance program, but deep organizational and operational intelligence? That he defected to Russia? That he met Russian officials in Honk Kong before leaving? That his passport was revoked and arrest warrant was issued before he left Hong Kong, completly invalidating his claim that he ended up in Russia by happenstance? That his defection was sanctioned by Putin and orchestrated by WikiLeaks, both actors now embroiled in an attempt to corrupt American elections?? Those publicaly acknowledged'conspiracy' claims?

Or is it that I just refuse to take his unsubstantiated claims at face value, and that makes me a conspiracy nut?

The guy is the definition of a traitor to his country.
> Whether the procedure costs $5 or $5000 is irrelevant

To expand on this, it's impossible to compare prices between providers when the illness is known because the total cost is often not known until you receive a bill.
I want sites penalized when they take part in user-tracking.
Without productivity, nothing would get done. In our society, where we have tons of distractions, as well as the innate ability for procrastination, it should be priority to set goals in order to accomplish things, even if it is just one or two things a day. If you want something in life, you have to go for it. Very few people get lucky and are given handouts.
>Is Google somehow morally obligated to ensure a website's revenue model...

This particular change doesn't irk me, but the one where they penalized for too many "above the fold" ads did bother me..because Google is the king of above-the-fold ads in search results. Similar for penalties for "duplicate content", which is exactly what their kg/widget program is doing...scraping other people's content.

So, as long they as practice as they preach, it seems reasonable.
It is your fault if you can't explain how you solved the problem; anybody can look over someone's shoulder and copy the final answer. Producing the steps allows the teacher to verify that most likely you did the problem yourself.
the letter to the columnist is ambiguous and did not say if the consumer knew the email was from google or from the airline or from the agent. I can only imagine the consumer could not tell the difference and simply assumed that the advice came directly from the airline.

I have not seen this 'email' myself but I know that if the itinerary was present in my gmail inbox the flight details, i get the flight card on the google search engine when searching for the flight. definitely not in the form of an email.
Yes, Tesla cars had AEB since March 2015. Autopilot (with autosteer) came out in October 2015. Presumably Tesla's AEB gets improved a little with every firmware release.
mssql has this in the Database Engine Tuning Advisor

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174202.aspx
> Having endured arid or semi-arid conditions for roughly 55–80 million years, the Namib may be the oldest desert in the world[1][3]

Wow. Just to put that in perspective, it was a desert when North America was still joined to Europe, India wasn't and Australia was an Antarctic appendage:

http://www.bobspixels.com/kaibab.org/geology/gc065mya.htm
A few seconds of research would have revealed that their API requires an authentication token[1]

[1]https://discordapp.com/developers/docs/reference
It's a good thing that ublock origin can be installed on firefox mobile (android). Firefox on Android isn't nearly as fast in UI performance as chrome, but the ability to use standard firefox plugins makes up for it.
You can implement key/value stores in RDMS's too. It only take a few minutes to create a key/value table in most databases, combined with a few minutes in your favorite language to map it to an appropriate get/set routine. I find this particularly useful for variable attributes against another table, especially when its really a "foreign index, key, value" table. That way its still possible to join the values to other parts of the database. This paradigm really lends itself to multiple FK/key/value tables, where each one extends another particular table.

All that said, doing this requires careful thought, and DB normalization when its discovered that there is a 1:1 relationship between rows in a table and a particular key/value table. So, its not something that should be taken to extreme, but I find it aids in quick development, as every time you discover you need to store another piece of data for some edge condition it doesn't require lots of DB normalization. Also, I wouldn't really consider making the "value" field a blob, rather a very limited int or string.
I wonder how much of the internet userbase, like myself, just close a site the moment a pop-up appears which takes me away from what I want to be doing.

Has anyone here done any AB testing on it and have some numbers?
Because I can't edit my above post any more, I'll add it here: I marked it correct. I didn't feel like penalizing him for something that had never been taught.

Here's an idea for a better problem:

Solve the following:

x^3 = 27

y^3 = 21

z^4 = 85

My rationale is that there will be a huge time advantage for the student who works out the solutions by using roots, and a visual "hint" that there might be a general solution.
I don't mean to be mean, but people who don't know basic algebra are unlikely to be making algorithmic breakthroughs.
The arguments against Uber here are well-stated and have been posted elsewhere (see Naked Capitalism's excellent 6-part series)

In these comments (and other HN threads) I see the same pro-Uber arguments again and again so I will try my best to address them as I think they are misguided.

> Uber is doing all this in anticipation of self-driving cars, which will change the economics of the whole operation.

The first and most obvious issue here is runway. True self-driving cars that won't need a human in the driver's seat are probably 5 years away. Can Uber lose 1-2B a year until then?

The second problem is that Uber won't have a monopoly on self driving car tech. Google and others will get there around the same time. How will this be a competitive advantage to Uber and not to Lyft or some yet-to-come competitor?

> Uber is building network effects that will protect it from competitors.

Uber's network effect, if it has one, is at odds with the self-driving car strategy. Right now Uber has the shortest ride waits because it has the most drivers. If a driver is a robot, a well-capitalized competitor can just buy a huge fleet and take over any local market.

So you can't have both the network effect and the self-driving fleet. And without both, Uber is likely not worth anywhere near 70B.

> Taxis are just step 1. Uber is building a platform to bring anything or anyone from A to B.

A software platform for logistics would never be worth 70B. Period.

In Uber's meager attempts to generalize their own platform, such as Uber Eats, they have not done very well.

If total knowledge about driving patterns and navigation is the real money-maker, Google will have a big advantage with Maps/Waze data. In fact, most Uber drivers are using Maps or Waze to drive anyway.

> Uber's customer experience is so good I stopped using Taxis.

Uber's current dominance can be explained by one thing: price. Analysis has shown that every Uber ride is subsidized by about 50%, even in mature markets. If Uber suddenly doubled all prices they'd lose customers in droves.

As for driver quality, any long-time Uber user can tell you this has gone down to be about the same as a cab (slightly better, but not reliably better). The average uber driver is just some guy doing whatever the GPS tells him to do. It's low-wage work and Uber is pushing the wages down all the time, there's no way you're going to keep high driver quality indefinitely.
Mao Zedong killed 65 million, Stalin killed 23 million and Hitler killed 17 million.

But it's Hitler that we remember. It's Hitler that gets cited by right-thinking fellows on the internet. It's Hitler's logo that gets banned from the tshirt stores. Why?

Hitler's crew had strong propaganda, that's why.

Propaganda is what rolls around in the media, and the public mind, for centuries. Not reality.

I guess "marketing" is the more common term.

Marketing can turn black into white and day into night. It is powerful.
Please name and shame the httpd that's asking for plaintext SSNs... That's newsworthy and I'm sure some tech journalists will pick it up on a slow day.
If there isn't some compilation or review article along the lines of "all serious failure modes encountered in autonomous vehicles since 2005-ish," there should be.
This, there are two ways to stand out in a group; one is to do excellent work, the other is to make everyone else appear worse than you. A "political" leader will use their skill at 'crafting the narrative' to establish a completely different reality for those who don't have the time to figure out what is really going on.

Perhaps another way to look at it would be how cult leaders get people locked into their way of thinking. It makes them very effective but by my definition it doesn't make them 'good leaders'.

One of the VP's at NetApp used to say "When your actions improve everyone's experience at the company it is leadership, when your actions improve your own experience at the company its politics."
I couldn't get past the light gray text, the lack of contrast made it very hard to read. This guy needs a readability-coach.
And when the loading speed is slow, which makes the layout move, so your attempt to click the [X] accidentally clicks the advert instead, generating income for the site.

(why are you being downvoted? No idea, you make a reasonable, articulate statement, with a credible explanation. Sometimes it just happens on HN. I like to assume people are accidentally clicking the [▼] character by mistake).
Every Target I've been to has the milk before just about every other grocery item. Strangely enough, the seasonal stuff is tucked away in a corner.

Then again, I guess if you're going to target for milk you're probably doing it wrong...