skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Textbooks are flat out unnecessary. The notes on the board should be enough to understand the material, and the teacher can either write their own problem sets or copy them from somewhere and put them online. There's just no excuse to require a textbook for a class - it means the teacher is unable to communicate the material effectively and needs the students to read it on their own, can't be bothered to write or copy homework sets, or is forcing students to buy the professor's own book out of greed, none of which should be seen as acceptable. If the department makes you have one, just don't use it (happened in a few of my classes). For classes that need some out of class readings like history or English, there's no excuse to make students buy books when the body of freely available, uncopyrighted work out there on the internet is so easy to access. Good example: a history class I had a few semesters ago where the primary documents were a simple downloadable .doc.

I've had lots of classes that worked like this, particularly my Calculus I/II classes where there was a textbook but homework from it was just suggested, not collected, and the lectures were entirely sufficient to understand the material and do well on the exams.

Beyond being a pointless scam, I'd go as far as to say textbooks make professors worse than they would be otherwise by letting professors use them as a crutch.
Wise advice.

Use both because the real tool that you are using for data analysis is the computer, not the programming language. R and Python are both just parts of the toolset.

Nowadays there are lots of ways to combine the two from Rpy2 to Orange3 to Jupyter and the Beaker Notebook. Notably the last two let you use Groovy,Java,Scala and a host of other languages as well. Apache Taverna also plays in this space of integrating multiple tools with different strengths to do a job.

R will likely never be eclipsed by anything because it has such a broad and deep collection of statistical libraries. But Python won't go away because it is a great tool for general purpose computing and even hardcore stats heads have a lot of general purpose computing problems to deal with.

It is sad to read R code that copies files, gets data from S3 buckets, runs SQL queries, and so on. So much of it is crudely hacked together and even the libraries that support this are shoddily built. The best of both worlds is to use Python for pre and post processing, but R for the stats libraries (CRAN, BioConductor).

For lots of S3 wrangling the best tool is a Java library called Je
tS3t, and using a language like Groovy or Scala makes it easy to tame. And Groovy is integrated deeply into Jenkins which has evolved beyond a CI tool into a general purpose dashboard for managing and running "jobs". Works great for big data stuff that is not purely Map/Reduce.

Beaker Notebook is leading the charge by integrating seamless conversion of data frames between languages so that you can write a script in two or three languages at the same time, building on the strengths of each one.

If you stick with just one language then expect the next generation of data scientists to leap far beyond you in a few years. A sea change is coming.
Can I get more info on this?
Audits and compliance aren't required at scale /s
Not to speak for the parent, but it seems to me that paying for "ops specialization" is different, exactly the opposite even, from "ops specialization isn't needed."
I listened a lot to Tangerine Dream in the 1980s. Poland is my favorite (they've made tons of records). I guess you already now about Klaus Schultze and Edgar Froese...
At the point of level 4, the roads and conditions will change to better accommodate, likely pushing cities and villages farther apart (particularly in America).
As a student in my forties I have been appalled at the price and quality of many of my textbooks. The $300 dollars worth of textbooks in one class could have done with a few youtube videos. The publishers know this cash cow is coming to an end due to piracy and online textbook rentals. Now, they are charging less for textbook but gouging students on the mandatory online components.
It just needs to be spun as a free market thing (the professors are entrepeneurs and competition brings down prices) :) And then cross your fingers nobody gets sued into oblivion.
Thank you for checking out Erlang Performance Lab. We have better documentation on our github repo page: https://github.com/erlanglab/erlangpl
Anyone involved in the creation or deployment of driverless vehicles should be applauded for ushering in a future we can all agree is sorely needed. The current world where every driver is an unpredictable human being is just too dangerous. I'm excited to leave it behind forever.
This may interest you:

https://superuser.com/questions/1014071/how-to-protect-my-di...

Standard advice: the best thing you can do for protecting data is have an offsite backup. This could be as simple as Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, etc.
Looks interesting, it would be nice if the ”Why?“ section contained comparisons to other CMSs.
That is true in the sense that the fundamental algorithms and data structures and so on are maths and maths doesn't change.

But the vast majority of them are available in Python libraries, and if you need something right now say a library interfacing to a particular DB or protocol, there is a very high probability that in Python you can pip it in a minute and it will basically work, vs having to do it yourself in Lisp - and it's not cool fun stuff like a new algorithm, it's dull boring work of reverse engineering and hacking around the bugs in someone else's product, and Lisp doesn't give you any leverage there.
In many places in Europe there are apps to hail legal taxis, with the rating system as well. To make it even funnier, in some of these places the taxis hailed by an app are significantly cheaper than Uber. The only reason anyone would ever use Uber in e.g. Dublin is being unaware of Hailo.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14019951
Auto Insurance Can Help Cover the Cost of the Car
> As a side note, the previous generations (ps2, gamecube) all have great emulators.

Sega Saturn some way to go before emulation can be described as great.

http://wiki.yabause.org/index.php5?title=Compatibility_list
Well cell change is the shared grouping no? I am seriously asking
The entire OS/2 2.0 fiasco is one of my favorite topics. One thing I'd like to point out is that Win95's dependence on DOS allowed Caldera to continue to sue MS.
I think you have to read it like "executed on >all paths to the function exit< as early as possible". As in, if you have an expression that is always executed regardless which path you take before returning. It's useful to move that expression upwards instead of having copies on the different paths to the function exit.
> The money that is spent on making education free for students at a tertiary level could be spent on improving primary education and it should be.

Sources on that? Education is not free at a tertiary level. It's just really cheap. Also, your premise is completely opposite to the reality. Primary education in India has seen huge progress. Yes, there's still room for improvement, but the plans are in place. For example, public schools are mostly free and girls below a certain age gets free education. The concern is about low higher education enrollment levels, which stood only at about 24% in 2013 [1]. If tertiary education was free, this should've been much higher.

Coming back to the original comment, people usually don't take huge loans for education in India like in the US. So the chances of you being homeless if you lose your job is lower.

[1] http://data.uis.unesco.org/
Seems more like common sense doesn't it? You decrease the chances of consuming random poisons in food by... consuming less food.
But MySQL's problem is that those "archaic defaults" shouldn't have happened in the first place.

No matter how good MySQL is good at documenting their bugginess, weirdness, flakiness and overall history of legacy warts, the point was PostgreSQL eliminates pretty much all of this through promoting, at every single stage of the development process, the same strict, uncompromising QA principles. By doing this, legacy behaviour generally disappears.

Postgres isn't bug-free, of course. But they take great care to not be continually chased by a tsunami of technical debt. If you build a house on a crappy foundation, you get a crappy house, so it's a good idea to spend time on the foundation before building the house. The Postgres team spent years on the foundation, before building the higher-level parts, and the rewards are obvious.

Meanwhile, MySQL has spent years and years slowly mopping up tech debt. Things have gotten a lot better with the tighter semantics, such as preventing "February 29th" from being inserted, or rejecting "0000-00-00" as a date, or silently ignoring data coercion errors, and so on. But those things shouldn't have happened in the first place if the developers had been better at QA. So while you're right that the documentation is decent at describing various legacy semantics, it's also encodes a history of carelessness that's rather embarrassing reading.

By the way, date/datetime regression I mention isn't in the documentation at all. It's in their bug tracker.
Is that industry consensus? Also, I think closed-access freeways are very well mapped, is level 5 needed to disrupt the trucking industry, or will level 4 do?
ggplot2 no longer has the pretty pictures field to itself. Python's matplotlib does great graphs too. Javascripts d3.js does similar. And there are other libraries as well.

For static images to put into a PDF, maybe it doesn't matter what you use, but when you see the ease of creating interactive data exploration graphs on a web server using d3.js and its ecosystem, you will be pleasantly surprised.
"Isn't needed [anywhere]" is also different from "isn't needed in my organization" which is how I read the author's words.

In context, the quote is:

"NoOps to me, means no ops specialization in my organization — ie. no dedicated ops team — because the skills and efforts required to fulfill the ops responsibilities do not justify the need for such specialization. As an organization it’s in your best interest to delay such specialization for as long as you can"

That's not downplaying the value of ops, IMO.
It definitely does not mean the same thing, the OSD is not congruent to the four freedoms. They have significant overlap, but they are not equal sets.[1]

As a dumb example, the Open Watcom license is an "open source" license but is not a free software license because it is too restrictive. In the Open Watcom instance, the OSD does not protect the freedom for users to have private copies of software, the four freedoms do (or at least the modern interpretation does).

There's also the whole TiVo thing, where the modern interpretation of freedom 0 is restricted by DRM while "open source" software does not have any problems with DRM restricting users.

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
Total guess, I've never seen one of these things in person, but: guessing that the knobs have some logical relationship to each other, like knobs in one row share a subject, and moving to a knob left or right changes the same thing, but more in one way than another way.

Also, one reason I still like physical books is that when I'm looking for something that I've read before, I know it's on a left or right page, and whether it's top, middle or bottom. There's probably a mind theory that explains that, and knob location is probably related. Guess.

Maybe this also has something to do with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception

But to me it's all just knobs.
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/retail/square-winds-dow...
quoting the article:
> "But if all life, including cancer cells, continues to exploit niches, no solutions from technologists will be final.

It's plausible that we may eventually have such a good understanding of biological processes, and such powerful technology, that it'll be straightforwards for us to adapt treatments to new exploits.

Obviously no one can know for sure if this will or won't be possible, nor, if it will be possible, how far in the future it will be.

(Note: just because some technological ability seems really distant from our current capabilities does not make it valid to assume that it could only be something possible really distant in the future. We only need to look at the history of technology to see such assumptions can't be made).
Textbooks which are essentially the same are available in europe for like 1/3 of the price of the american versions. I bought $70 books for my master's courses in Sweden that would have been $300 in the US (where I did my undergrad). The "invisible hand" of capitalism at work!
Hit right on the nail with every point. I'll add one more: feature requests that are fishing expeditions on the customer's part, but are interpreted as show-stopping issues by sales/management.

And one more: byzantine network architectures and change management procedures that take six weeks and seventeen different signoffs to get a VM provisioned or an account created.
There is also a similar story for Siebel (Northwestern Mutual I think?). In enterprise software, buying from small companies is not the norm, so if some large organizations invest in your product, it can trigger the larger market to believe in you. I believe the trick is to make sure the "big" accounts you take on aren't ones that are going to take you too far off your normally planned roadmap. If you find yourself building one-off features, one for each customer, you are in for a world of hurt. If your big customers drive you to build your roadmap faster or more aggressively, that isn't always a bad thing.
> Automatic & Free SSL/TLS

A couple of years ago, I wouldn't have believed we would be seeing essentially zeroconf TLS/PKI in software anytime soon. Letsencrypt, the "encrypt everything" movement, and people like Steve, Ponzu's author, have improved internet security tremendously at a time when it is critically needed.
The other problem the Comet had was economic. It could only carry 36 passengers. The 707 could carry 140.

The larger number of passengers meant the 707 per-passenger cost made it cheaper to operate. The 707 could do 5 times the work of a piston powered DC-6 at only double the cost. It was a huge money-maker for airlines.

http://generalatomic.com/jetmakers/chapter7.html
Can I do this with a single wifi router in my house or is it saying I need 7 "routers" or access points for this to work?
Why wouldn't the storm wipe out Dropbox / Amazon's HDDs too?
Exactly. The tiny stuff can also be decelerated by solar wind and other random forces and fall back into the atmosphere.

The larger stuff on the other hand can cause serious impacts by transferring its momentum to the site of impact and causing damage to spacecraft.

An elastic net would let the small stuff zing around it while it could be deployed to pick up the larger stuff, by moving slightly fasted than geosynchronous orbit. Then it can actually toss them in various directions either slightly towards our atmpsphere or slightly away from Earth, to adjust its own course without expending fuel.

We could literally write a navigation program that would guide it on a path to clean up a lot of major debris this way without expending much fuel. It would only need its power for the tossing, which could be done with small explosions or mechanical pushes. The small stuff wouldn't alter its course much and the AI could correct it. Plus since it's in near earth orbit we could send updated routes to it.

Is anyone interested in writing code to route such a "space bot" by collecting and throwing stuff in various directions? We can simulate it in a 3D simulation with virtual random garbage of various sizes orbiting a planet.

Then you could present this sim to NASA or the Chinese space agency and make some big bucks :)
The scripts ( read: ads) on this article crashed my browser. My phones not new by any metric but still; I don't think its unreasonable to expect a page intent on serving text to load without issue.
I've heard a piece of general advice, that in general (if you are B2B) it is good to work with customers of a similar size as you! I think it makes sense.
> What an odd comment. So because we performed some clever math to make some basic neural nets, our AI is now experiencing a form of consciousness?

Yes, you keep re-hashing this point which makes it clear that you still (and probably always will) believe that consciousness is something 'more' -- something mystical and unexplainable -- because it's so difficult and non-intuitive to wrap your head around (as it is for most people).

> Not sure if trolling or not? You should look up protein folding and protein machines at some point, basically there is a LOT going on at the nano scale that we still don't fully understand. Additionally tell any neuroscientist that the brains neural networks are the same as our computer version of NNs and you'll be laughed out the room.

Who said our models are the same? You're missing the point. Re-read the paragraph you're replying to, and look what we've accomplished with just dozens of simplified neurons. The point is that the details beneath our high level understanding of neurons (basically just spiking and activation) are likely not important to consciousness. Just like a high school physics student can usefully understand the mechanics of rubber balls without fully grasping the chemistry at the atomic level.

> And perception is a function of the brain yes, how is that an opinion? Your arguments really make no sense.

Here's the context, to remind you:

> Amazing that every sentence you wrote is objectively wrong.

>> 7. This internal stream of perceptions and judgements is consciousness.

> No, this is just a function of part of the brain, which we can be aware of through consciousness.

Just want to feel like you won an argument today? No need to turn this into a troll battle -- I'm actually trying to explain my viewpoint to you, if you're interested.
I've worked with Walmart a few times now, and they want to invest in innovative start ups, however they are also risk adverse and they want to mitigate that. Perhaps they look at your books to see if you are going to be around next week/month/year and the side effect is insight into pricing. They definitely push you to deliver, however it's usually pretty pragmatic stuff.
I suspect there is a real relationship. General intelligence is a real phenomenon. Being smart at one task indicates, though does not guarantee, that you'll be smart at another task.

This is of course a different question than whether this test provides maximum predictiveness of future success. But it seems obvious to me that the test provides some information. It's really hard for a variable to be completely non-informative.

Lastly, I think it's important for us to not be too defensive. I sense, perhaps incorrectly, that sometimes we don't want to give value to tests we are bad at, because doing so would imply we aren't as good as feel we are.
I think of this when I see disagreement about how far autonomous cars are. One the one hand, I can agree that we aren't quite there yet. There might even be some unknown problems that might add decades to the goal being achieved.

On the other hand, there is improvement happening in all the subcomponents. Processing power, hardware, software etc.This is what really makes it hard to predict. Especially if you're not an insider and rely on information mostly from public announcements and news. For example: I hear autopilot 2.0 is not doing so good from some people. While others says it's feature locked on purpose while things are being tested out. Maybe both views has some truth to it, but I can't gage just how good that software actually is.
Java or Go are easily 10 times faster than Python/Rail on the same hardware. (Potentially much more, especially when you have non trivial logic to process in the code).

That's a recurrent issue with API code (that usually has to be somewhat fast). Not so much for frontend generation.

P.S. Sorry but hundreds of customer is nothing. That's served by a pair of boxes (DB + webserver) irrelevant of the language.
It's interesting, because I'd argue that the best companies in tech have have interviews that are very structured and predictable.
The presence of microplastics in commercial salts from different countries
Clang really pushed this area forward. Good to see.
> Also, from what I've seen the problems with food scarcity don't stem from low crop yields but rather from distribution. I don't think seeing it as a crop yield problem is the right way to approach it.

Absolutely agree on this one. The world produces enough food (well, cereal grains) to feed everyone. However, I would still argue that increasing crop yields is incredibly important for the species as a whole. Better yields means lesser land required for cultivation. You basically reduce the environmental footprint of agriculture and I think this would be incredibly important e.g. in Africa where you either may not have a lot of Arable land OR might not want to cut down virgin forests just to feed your people.
The video is fascinating, if a bit frightening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukQhycKOFw
ESP32 WiFi Range Testing – 10km Using Directional Antenna (and MON Mode)
The corner of a square hole in a flat plate has 4x the stress of the surrounding material. It's called a "stress riser". If you look at a concrete slab with such an inside corner, there's usually a crack there.

Boeing solved the problem by using rounded windows, and riveting on a forged doubler around the window frame. The skin was also organized so a crack will not propagate far. The success of the latter has shown itself in various incidents where an airliner has lost a panel in flight, but went on to land safely.
No i am aware of that which is why you keep going back to it being a democratic institution. But thats not whats at question here. You tried to argue that the judges ruling was justified By isolating it to a legality thing, but then a lot of other companies should be shut down in itally. Foreign truckdriver companies from eastern europe, automated cars etc all on the basis that they are based on unfair competition. Its a politically motivated ruling too.
I just tried it at home and it works great with a distance of just 10 feet or so between two locations.

My laptop can see 26 unique wifi hotspots (other people in the building, cafe across the street, etc), which is the number the author was referring to.
At my US university the school had a (free) text book rental program. I never had to buy any books.

edit: Obviously the initial cost of the books is paid for by tuition, but it's much less than the cost of each student buying their own book.
Following the cancellation, the Defence Secretary Liam Fox used the Nimrod MRA4 procurement as an example of the worst of MOD procurement performance

Ah those innocent days, before the QE carriers and the F35 made that look like mere pocket change.
PhD student working on geomagnetic storms- these storms would cause changes in the earth's magnetic fields of hundreds of nanoTeslas, and cause electric fields of a few (<10) volts per km. Only reason why power networks are affected is because they span hundreds of Kms.

The geomagnetic storms are generally over long periods- low frequencies. From a quick glance at Wikipedia, this is unlike an EMP.

I really doubt they'd affect equipment like HDDs.
Security: Losses Outpace Gains
Trucks driving autonomously on the interstate and being picked up by a human operator near city limits doesn't seem that far away. The trick will be to balance competition and the need to be first to market with the risk of accidents, because every negative PR hit for self-driving cars sets back the entire field politically.