skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Any school that teaches programming will take a stab at teaching debugging, although that is often limited to general familiarity with a debugger, say to the level of stepping through code and inspecting state.

The problem is that debugging is hard, and will tend to very quickly manifest any flaws in a novice's understanding. When I teach it, I describe it as a manifestation of the scientific method: observe the phenomenon (my program isn't doing what I expect), hypothesis (it might be this), experiment (if that's the problem then doing this should result in...). Repeat ad frustratum.

Unfortunately, doing that effectively required some pre-requisites: (1) An accurate mental model of how the program should behave, with sufficient detail to hypothesize about why it's not behaving that way, (2) Available tools and instrumentation that allow you to inspect a running program (I'm old enough to remember debugging by adding commands to print state to the console), (3) sufficient experience and sophisticated understanding of the system to be able to make valid hypotheses and design tests.

Only the second item easily lends itself to the classroom, and the third item is critical: After I help a student identify and isolate a bug, they often ask me how I knew what to try. The answer is, almost always, that I've seen that before. Hell, there used to be a type of memory fault in Borland C++ that I could diagnose from across the room just by the icon and size of the error dialog. (You get a lot of experience seeing error messages by teaching Freshman programming).

So, short answer, the reason we don't do a good job teaching debugging to novices is at least partly because they're not ready to learn it yet.
Yeah, sounds more like a review of the reviewer than an actual review of the book. I mean, fair enough. The first time I read siddhartha I thought the main character was an asshole, and couldn't figure out why anyone would live a life like that character. Read it again a few years ago, and realized I was an idiot, had _completely_ missed the point the first time through as a teenager.

These things happen :)
I don't agree that "software is no place for introverts". There are definitely many software engineers out there who are introverts. You just have to find an environment and team mates that are welcoming and accept you as who you are.
enjoyed the ride we had together!
"A 100% tax on the estate upon one's death?"

Interested in your comments on the medical-industrial complex as applies to people with less than, say, $10M net worth at retirement. Which is only about 99.9% of the population.

My grandparents were like that. Low level limousine liberals, a couple million net worth, retire at 60, a couple chronic diseases which were kinda expensive, a couple very expensive acute diseases, by the death of my grandmother a good 30 years later, pretty much nothing left. They spent their first 30 in the great depression and WWII so they really had only 30 years of good times to save up for 30 years of retirement. Personally I've never been alive during good times, I wonder what it was like?

Also interested in your views on the invention of retirement as a 19th century concept. It never existed before that time, never existed outside a small number of white countries. I don't think the "standard American retirement" such as experienced in the 1900s is going to be experienced much outside the 1900s or across the entire world. Historically inheritance was a white nobility concept, and not all nobility, in all white countries, all the time, had inheritable titles and estates. The fact that the prince of England inherited his title from the King of England upon death is kind of a stretch to claim that proves some random bubba in America is owed grandpa's old car upon his death.
This article is super dry. Should have defined what model is first.

It says this model vs whatever descrimination is central to ai introductory, but doesn't say why. Why does this bother the author? Why is this important? What confusion one might have if nn is claimed as a model?

Instead, it simply says "I don't think nn is a model" and goes into hideous details about RNN's hidden states. What about a fully connected nn?
His essay about that topic was for sure one of the best things I've been reading in the last years.
JIRA is Down
One of the biggest reasons I am dismissive of the "free tuition" change in NYS for SUNY schools is the massive cost associated with college that isn't tuition. Ignoring room and board, tuition is still only ~50% of the cost of college. Fees can be massive (I was paying 2k+ a year in fees 10 years ago), text books are exorbitant, and that doesn't consider all the ancillary costs for lab supplies, etc.
I feel for you if you think that is harassment. The user Tome was asking clear and concise questions and you reply with "You are continuing to harass and smear me"?!?! Where did he/she harass and smear you? Do you even know the meaning of those words?
I hope this advice is not taken seriously by anyone. There are plenty of successful introverts in software development (myself included).
The Tech Stack of a School Bus Home
> if you cherish whatever stability and comfort your daily life affords.

I reckon this was their point rather than a rebuttal. They seem to believe it is legal as well as a right and they're going to at least try.

Would I do run a tor node? Not in Russia and prob not in the US where I live. I am glad a global network of people are braver than I am.
Sorry, but the implementation posted is O(|pattern| * |name|), not linear.
http://ideone.com/2xCXyY
The first thing to do is get the press to admit bias.

Bias is fine. Everyone is biased. Journalism in other countries works fine with admission of opinions. Just own your own viewpoints and quit pretending to be some neutral third party.

The important thing is to take the fiction off the table. "Of course we sound like marginally liberal establishment-supporters - we're the NYT." "Naturally we support the revanchists - we're Fox."

(See? My bias is up front.)
Recent study ("Running as a Key Lifestyle Medicine for Longevity"):

Abstract: Running is a popular and convenient leisure-time physical activity (PA) with a significant impact on longevity. In general, runners have a 25%–40% reduced risk of premature mortality and live approximately 3 years longer than non-runners. Recently, specific questions have emerged regarding the extent of the health benefits of running versus other types of PA, and perhaps more critically, whether there are diminishing returns on health and mortality outcomes with higher amounts of running. This review details the findings surrounding the impact of running on various health outcomes and premature mortality, highlights plausible underlying mechanisms linking running with chronic disease prevention and longevity, identifies the estimated additional life expectancy among runners and other active individuals, and discusses whether there is adequate evidence to suggest that longevity benefits are attenuated with higher doses of running.

Conclusion: There is compelling evidence that running provides significant health benefits for the prevention of chronic diseases and premature mortality regardless of sex, age, body weight, and health conditions. There are strong plausible physiological mechanisms underlying how running can improve health and increase longevity. Running may be the most cost-effective lifestyle medicine from public health perspective, more important than other lifestyle and health risk factors such as smoking, obesity, HTN, and DM. It is not clear, however, how much running is safe and efficacious and whether it is possible to perform an excessive amount of exercise. Also, running may have the most public health benefits, but is not the best exercise for everyone since orthopedic or other medical conditions can restrict its use by many individuals.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033062017...

NYT reporting on the study ("An Hour of Running May Add 7 Hours to Your Life"):

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/well/move/an-hour-of-runn...
This came in very handy for me on one of my side projects, specifically finding intersections between curves. Excellent content.
It is the right of the parents to provide the best for their kids, not right of the kids to receive the best from their parents.

If you put a 100% estate tax, then you're preventing people from working towards one of the biggest goals they work for, i.e. their kids.

Also, if a parent doesn't wanna give his wealth to his kids, no court in America would force the estate to go to the kids.

In other words, nobody is born rich, it's the rich individuals who make their kids rich.
When I went to UCSD (a long time ago) the standard engineering calculus book was revised every other year, usually changing all the homework problems, destroying the used market for it. It was written by the chair of the department. In that way the professors and the book publishers had an interest in keeping the price of textbooks very high.
This should be done at the same time as flipping the classroom!

http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158
HN isn't restricted to technology.
The word 'necessairly' is not unimportant in what I wrote. Over the centuries many societies and cultures have formed various ideas about how to deal with inheritance.

Presently in the U.S. inheritence is as you say it should be. It doesn't have to be this way and this way is not the only ethical or American way of dealing with inheritance. Indeed, Jefferson disagreed with what you wrote.

Also, I presented no scenario and have given no indication on what my beliefs on the issue are. I just said that a 100% estate tax would not necessarily leave surviving family members destitute. This is not disputable.
Cynical, but I don't think people should be downvoting this comment. It's obviously a real risk.
Ain't yours if you're dead
Certainly seems possible.

I do wonder if there is some vehicle ownership path dependence that feeds into sprawl though. If vehicle access becomes less of a binary choice, people don't double down on choices related to ownership.
> ...nail the basic functionality of the app...

As much as possible, yes. The app is essentially a point-of-sale system with a bunch of reporting features bolted on; nailing that core POS functionality in a way that kept it easy to build new reporting features on top was always my top priority.

> Were you able to keep up with expectations when you got enough users to sustain the business?

This is the situation I'm in now, actually -- most of my early users are in a nice steady-state, but I have lost a few who weren't happy with the drop in support as I slowed down on their specific, special-snowflake requests. All of them were also early adopters of the affiliate marketing scheme, though, so they've basically signed up their replacements already, and those users are entering into an app that's in a much more steady state, and have expectations set accordingly.

It's not a perfect outcome, and you're 100% right to call out those high expectations as a potential problem -- but as problems go I find that it's better to have demanding users than non-existant ones :)
Nothing helps me tackle a tough programming problem like a nice, long bike ride. Is it grueling at times? Of course. Are my legs burning by the end? Usually. But, hard physical activity is the perfect way to clear my mind.

Plus, the fact that your body will go to shit if you don't exercise. Before I started lifting weights approx 10 years ago, I had back aches from sitting in an office chair all day. After regular, challenging, weight training, those problems vanished. Why? Because my muscles are strong now.

If you don't use your muscles, they soon because worthless, and painful. It's amazing how much stronger you get in a short amount of time as a beginner in weight training.

You don't like exercising? Boo hoo, no one does. I'd much rather eat pizza and drink beer than put 30 miles on my bike. But, I know it's important, so I suck it up and go. Even when I absolutely don't want to.
Kind of ... the seats in the SUV fold down and I haul stuff in there too. You're right that it isn't as big an open space.

More importantly, the SUV will haul my (small) yacht but it's a strain on the mini-van.
All the cold email tips I used to get 60,000 signups
I got a few questions after mentioning my school bus home the other day (both here on HN and on IRC); it motived me to finally brush up this page and post it.

I hope this is useful for people experimenting with off-grid tech.
Out of curiosity, what do you use it for and do you have any project you can share?
I dream with the day that humans riding vehicles will be forbidden by law unless the driver would prove the need for human driving. So many deaths would be avoided.
My manager is over three teams. Each team has around ten developers. We all can't be promoted to manager "if" he leaves.
It's laziness to not click and read the link, it's arrogance to think that your criticism is valid in light of the results of your laziness.

I also didn't read the link, but I'm also not critiquing the study.
I have a lot of respect for Waymo's approach to this.

While Tesla and Uber have both just recklessly (imo) jumped in and started setting loose self driving cars and making bold claims, Google/Waymo has really taken a slow and measured approach and given great care to making sure their cars are actually safe.
> "that it spied on any and all electronic communications that occurred in the Long Island, New York area"

A blimp monitored communications that ran through buried fiber optic cables? Or were they just talking about wireless traffic? The former would, of course, be impossible.

> "Such is the nature of a nation run on secrets."

Every nation is run on secrets.
BART takeover robbery
I recommend you visit Finland! We have amasing bike paths also. :)

I think most of the Nordic countries share this trait.
>But NOW, after the United incident ...

Which is ironic because the guy was crazy. He was randomly selected to be bumped and the cops had to be called in to haul him off the plane, after pleading with him for half hour. What a self-important jackass - sucks he got a bad break with the lottery but if he doesn't go somebody else will have to take his place. That's not fair either.
Some African countries subsidize the price of malaria drugs. And NGOs who distribute these drugs are backed by big money such as Bill's foundation, WHO...
Can you withstand an ongoing, drawn-out, multi-year legal battle with a very well-funded corporate legal team?

Their legal claim appears to be very weak (based entirely on their terms of service) but they can almost certainly outspend and outlast you.
>I was referring to western audiences thinking they get something out of reading about Buddhism without any practice whatsoever.

This is a good point. Buddhism is something I had an intellectual interest in, but it became a lot of meaningless nonsense at a certain point, especially once you enter the more woo areas outside Theravada like the Tibetan traditions.

It wasn't until I took meditation seriously that a lot of this stuff clicked. I'm no Buddhist, just a humble meditator, but I find a great deal of value in this practice and not in a Western 'its just stress reduction, like deep breathing' kind of way, but as a way to explore and control my consciousness and to have the practice change me in ways I certainly was not expecting. All within a mostly Buddhist framework.

That said, this is true of all traditions on some level. You can't just read the Gospels and learn about Christ and expect any benefits. Living as Christ and following his teachings is more important, but unlike Buddhism, Christianity is not often just intellectualized away as theory like Buddhism is in the West. Why Buddhism gets treated this way is beyond me, I suspect it attracts people with intellectual interests but those types of people are also resistant to following a spiritual path and the tools used on that path like daily meditation or making efforts to be less materialistic or 'attached' to the dramas of the day.

If anything, those things are counter to Western life in significant ways and takes you well out of the mainstream, which can have cultural or economic consequences for you. I already was a standard deviation away from the norm before taking up these practices and now I feel like I'm two or three away. Ultimately, I think its a good thing and put on a path going to places I can't predict.
Docker Bomb
"I'm starting to get very skeptical to be honest. I tried to read that article looking for some hard evidence, one link went to BuzzFeed, where that linked to Forbes. I'm finding it hard to get more information."

(Edit: the fact that you did know about documentcloud link and relegate it's mention to the third paragraph of your comment is not very convincing about your quest for truth)

WTF are you talking about? The first external link in the body of the article is to the sworn testimony of the whistle-blower in question
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3227535-Spangenberg-...
I am thankful for emoji's existence in part because it's forcing Western app developers to actually support non-BMP Unicode codepoints.
Publishers are already lobbying against this. It's far cheaper to buy a department head or professor than it is to buy legislation.
Evil is also a well studied concept in philosophy, e.g. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concept-evil/ (Without claiming any relation to the discussion)
Agree to disagree, weak state typically leads to low competition because it's easy for incumbents to privatize public policy.
Thanks! That sounds pretty reasonable. It would be great to have that explained somewhere on the site.
How to organize our JavaScript / jQuery spaghetti code better
Mattermost team here, looks great! Thanks for offering this,
In my experience Germans are aware of their past almost to a fault (sufficient negative feelings run the risk of turning into defiance). Just saying.
Appointing the chairman is really one of the few influential bits that the President can do with the FCC. The chair sets the agenda for commission meetings, manages the commission's ~1700 employees, and sets enforcement priorities. Other than actually adopting new regulations (which requires a vote by all commission members), the FCC chair IS the FCC.

Also, while Commissioners Pai and O'Rielly were nominated by Obama, they were chosen in consultation with Republican congressional leadership (because the FCC must remain bipartisan by law). I'm not sure that one can say that they are "Obama appointees" in the same way that judicial appointees are.
> I think they probably just bought a license for a commercial fork of OpenFire.

That's very possible. Cisco bundled/bundles OpenFire into several of their enterprise appliances, including the Cisco Finesse product. Other companies do similar things. OpenFire is licensed under the Apache license.

There's also the possibility that your friend bought an enterprise license to OpenFire back when it was a commercial product under the name WildFire (Spark was commercial back then too). That would have been many, many years ago, back before Jive Software open sourced WildFire/OpenFire, Spark, Smack (XMPP Java Library), and several other pieces of software for real time communications.
There are old mushroom eaters and there are bold mushroom eaters, but there are no old bold mushroom eaters.
$2,000 to $5,000 per what increment of time? $35/hr is $70k/yr, or about $5800/month. (Numbers assume 2000 paid hours in a year.)
Google's approach is cautious, however has Tesla been reckless?
Development of JavaScript-based deep learning platform
I don't think I quite understand - what would lobbying against the creation of open textbooks do exactly? What kind of law could be passed that could prevent that?

I guess they might have enough leverage with professor/universities to force exclusivity contracts, but I would like to hear about examples.
I had a professor in college that explicitly told us to get an old version of the textbook. It ended up costing ~$8 on Amazon instead of $80 for the newest version.

My physics class on the other hand had a book that was 'customized' for us (chapters were rearranged to prevent resale), and we had to purchase access to webassign.
If you swallow nbomes and you die, I'm not sure how that's supposed to help you avoid them. It still doesn't make any sense.
So pessimistic.

We don't need to know how brains work to have useful interactions with them, even pulling out pictures and words from neural activity.

That sensor breakthrough has already happened- and no dangerous intermediate step was necessary. opnwatr can make 8 million 100micron wide scans 120 times per second with what is basically a slightly modified version of cheap commodity/consumer hardware (using IR LEDs).[1] fMRI is slower and lower resolution and can still be used to extract images from brains in real-time.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llL62bRsMIs
According to "theory of meaning",

In “General Semantics,” David Lewis wrote

I distinguish two topics: first, the description of possible languages or grammars as abstract semantic systems whereby symbols are associated with aspects of the world; and, second, the description of the psychological and sociological facts whereby a particular one of these abstract semantic systems is the one used by a person or population. Only confusion comes of mixing these two topics.

[1] : https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meaning/
Part 1 – Everything You Need to Know About Lumens
If you're going to run a Tor node at home make it a relay, not an exit. There is practically no risk to running a relay. Exits have risk because of situations like this.

If you want to run exit nodes use a hosted server. It separates it from your normal traffic and makes it clear that it has a specific purpose.
I would love to make a few of these connectors on my laser cutter. Seems like I will have to look carefully for source files...
Yeah, I would wait for a judgement from somebody like Wirecutter or Consumer Reports on whether such a product is likely to hold up.
I remember reading his book years ago and thinking it was an amazing read. I don't remember much about it now and I will for sure take a look at it again. I highly suggest it!
I use the case every day, it's what keeps my headphones from getting tangled and protects the cable from being pinched or cut.

However I think I'm the exception, I understand that most never use the plastic case for regular storage/transport.
As a side note to #2, I tend to monitor reddit for people who do that in response to my stuff...I watch discussions on reddit, and when people pop on just to pimp their own competitive products, I remind them via links to reddiquette that such behavior is not appropriate. Reddit is a funny place in that they'll stick with their own, and wait for you to implement a feature vs. jump to someone they think is on reddit solely to market their own product.

Of course, I've also found reddit traffic to be fairly worthless. They show up. They don't buy.