skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How to best utilize a 6 months sabbatical to improve technical skills
I currently work as a software engineer and have around ~15 years of experience. My current job is not bad and the technologies I work are current and emerging ones. I do actively spend time keeping tab on changing trends, and to keep pace with them. But I feel that my learning is shallow. Though I get a hang of new things I am not able to devote enough time (job/family commitments, commute etc.) to focus and develop depth in some of the areas I am interested in.

With an intent of improving my tech chops I am thinking of a taking a break of around ~6 months (leave the current job and look for a new one after ~6 months).

During this period I plan to improve my tech skills with focus towards distributed systems. At the end of my break I look forward to work in
developing solutions that involve distributed systems or work in setup, management, and monitoring of complex distributed systems (dev OPS role).

Here is a list of things I intend to focus during my break:

-- refresh/study datastructures, algorithms
-- learn a new programming language (thinking of Go, Rust)
-- learn a functional programming language (thinking of Erlang, or Haskell)
-- contribute to an open source project (currently I don't have any list/idea about ones I can look at)
-- get familiar with *nix internals
-- get a basic understanding of web security
-- A few MOOCs here and there
-- Read SICP (and similar texts).

(I am skeptical about SICP goal as I don't have a reading group to discuss things I study. I am afraid that reading alone with no discussion/feedback I will fall into the trap thinking that I have understood the topic despite gaps in my understanding.)

Given my intent I am requesting suggestions from HNers about the best possible ways to make effective use of the break I am planning for. Any other related suggestions are most welcome.

PS: I am currently based out of Bangalore

Thanks in advance.
This looks great, but I think that it would be even better if there was some way of bootstrapping it to existing libraries, say for example keras. I don't know how easy this would be, but I believe that it would definitely be very useful. Even without this capability, it looks like a great learning tool!
Jacobin https://www.jacobinmag.com/ is good for left-wing thinking.
The Iraq war was not done "because Hitler". It was as clear as gold that it wasn't just about chemical weapons, but much rather about oil and funneling money into the US weapons industry.

What the Iraq war (just as the Afghanistan war) has lacked and still lacks, unfortunately, is a post-war strategy similar to the Marshall plan...
Old Love Never Dies – Tatra T603
2017 EuroLLVM Developers' Meeting
No, 'The Handmaid’s Tale' Is Not 'Unexpectedly Timely'
And also[1]. I think they say the QC20 have better noise cancelling but I have a pair and I think over the head QC35's are more comfortable

[1] http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-noise-cancelling-in-ea...
BOAWs website doesn't look all that great + their iOS apps haven't been updated in 2+ years. I'm not saying it couldn't be an amazing community, but unless someone jumps in here and tells me they're a user and it's amazing, I'd be suspicious.
- Slides: http://llvm.org/devmtg/2017-03/

- Detailed program: http://llvm.org/devmtg/2017-03/2017/02/20/accepted-sessions....
The number one mistake they made was in deciding to make the package database stateful. Such an odd choice for a language so focused on purely functional programming. Packages should be pure functions, with the final result being a read-only cache. This is how Nix [0] works and it makes everything else seem like a bad idea by comparison.

[0] https://nixos.org/nix/
I went to a hatsune miku holographic performance at a festival concert here in Tokyo a few years back. The crowd was into it and it was a lot of fun.

Visually, it was totally convincing from the center of the floor at mid-distances. There were other characters who performed, they had costume changes, special effects, etc... It's a 2D effect but at concert distances, you can't really tell and the lighting of the character convinces your eyes.

There was one point where she put her foot up on a monitor speaker and my mind was blown until I realized that the monitor was part of the hologram too. It had been sitting there by the floor for the whole song waiting to have her put her foot on it.
I think this post is more of a collection of others comments and ideas than an actual understanding of the issues. I almost stopped reading when I came to this in a sentence:
the word algorithm (or the phrase “Bid Data”).

The author seems not to understand what they write, only what they have read other people say, about algorithms and how people respond to them. Although it's all very "meta" and some of his literary discussions on the agency of Marlow in Heart of Darkness are interesting... in the end it seems just as banal and oblivious to what is actually happening as those it describes.

tldr- the concluding paragraph:

"And how might we pursue the life of the mind? Perhaps the first, modest step in that direction is simply the cultivation of times and spaces for thinking, and perhaps also resisting the urge to check if there is an app for that."
How startup culture is spreading across the U.S
By this obtuse definition of 'pass by reference', Nothing with a C-like function call stack will 'pass by reference'. Programming languages that approximate 'pass by reference' will actually pass a pointer to the called function that points to a value in the callee's stack frame. The pointer in the called function is a local variable, so changing the value of that has no effect in the callee's scope. Changing the contents of the thing pointed to is the only _meaningful_ 'pass by reference', and practically most languages have that. (including Go)
Are you seriously suggesting there's a profound loss of meaning between:

> There’s a moment in your book that I love, when you give advice to awkward people looking for social shortcuts, and you tell them not to be literal wallflowers.

and

> There’s a moment in your book that I love, when you give advice to awkward people looking for social shortcuts, and you tell them not to be wallflowers.
According to the profile at the top left of the page, this person's preferred pronouns are "they" and "them". They self-identify as non-binary.
One solution that isn't mentioned is improving our voting process. U.S. ranks something like 30th in voter turnout. Given that you're more likely to vote if you're well-educated/higher income, white and older means many of the disenfranchised referred to in this article aren't represented in govt.
Makes sense to me. Private agencies must act in the interest of themselves in a fiduciary sense, even outside of market forces.

Once you involve market forces, and worse, the issuing of stock leading to ownership by a class that demands immediate returns of money for their investment, private agencies are seemingly required to screw over citizens, because that's how you extract money from them in large quantities.

Contrasted to that, the bureaucracy of public entities is a much more insignificant problem. Public internet might be sort of 'third world', but right now they are kicking our butts in that, and Comcast might be working hard (meh…) but they are not working for you, they are working to extract capital out of you in the most efficient manner possible.

Once you include the caveat of 'all citizens' (even in Podunkville) it's not even an argument anymore. There's an assumption that it's right and proper to hose Podunkville because they're not the big city and shouldn't have nice things if their productivity doesn't warrant it, and this assumption is fair to challenge or even contradict outright. I'm rooting for Podunkville (the big city doesn't need my ideological help) so I'm in favor of public entities.

I guess we'll be seeing some experimentation, in that we're likely to see a heavy swing to privatization right now, and most likely a counter-swing in four to eight years. Should be worth keeping track of how it all works. That 'all citizens', though, that's a conditional which is at the heart of the discussion.
This is a very poor article title, at best it could be 'Nomx rejects vulnerability report, claims to be secure.'
Should I study engineering in Germany?

I'm looking at undergrad programs in California right now and the numbers don't add up for me. Not just tuition, but cost of living as a full time student as well. I also feel like it would be much easier for me (a non-traditional student) to get into a better university over there, as they pretty much just look at your test scores. Not all this GPA/extra-curricular "well rounded" stuff they do here. Do they provide many undergrad programs in English? Are the degrees accredited in the US?
Four Facets of Good Open-Source Libraries
Facts that have affected generations and driven a part of your population to the lowest levels are, indeed, political. Especially if they point out facts you don't like.

Aree you going to say the same thing about Jim Crow laws? There has been a systematic will to enslave and degrade black people in America, and this is a continuing effort.
I can name a few. For example Neukölln in Berlin, or some areas in Köln (like Kalk, Ossendorf, Chorweiler, Porz), or the north of Duisburg. You can find lots of references online - search for "no-go zone germany", or simply befriend a German policeman.

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/nordrhein-westfalen-po...

https://www.derwesten.de/politik/in-problemvierteln-fuerchte...

All these are areas where policemen are afraid to work because they may get suddenly surrounded by 40-50 people. It's true, you can still access them, but then it doesn't mean you get out easily, hence they are not accessible.
D is for disorder. People who say NT are people who challenge the claim that Disorder is appropriate terminology. Instead of an "order/disorder"distinction, they draw a "typical/diverse" distinction.

NT isn't quite neutral -- nothing ever is -- it's an intentional removal of the bias that the center of the bell curve is superior.
I think the key part is "regardless of where they come from". For instance, Scotland has free tuition for the Scottish and other EU citizens, but not for citizens of England/Wales/NI or international students. (The fees for an English person are typically cheaper than other English universities, but still not to be sniffed at).

I am not sure about NI or Wales, but I imagine there's a similar situation.
I too started a paypal account when I was underage with mother's permission, help, and her checking account attached so I could sell thrift store finds on ebay. I've been with them over 10 years and never used another payment service. Uhg.
So You Want to Abolish Time Zones
I've created a thread to discuss the original, much more interesting paper: "How... Startup Economy [Culture] is Spreading Across the [U.S.] — and How It Can Be Accelerated"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14227248
Their support won't answer any question related to account suspension.
You should resist light gray thin text on a white background.
> 16-year-olds are considered fully "legal" in that particular regard.

Not quite correct. See https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__182.html and https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__174.html
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Interestingly, this article just tanked from 6th to 38th according to hnrankings.info, maybe I've found a conspiracy for my next Medium article.
Yeah, okay, I shouldn't have suggested the use of the word 'figuratively' as a surrogate for some emphatic adjective.

Would you be happy with 'I died laughing ...' when people describe something especially funny? (I would, for the record.)

And/or do you think 'I literally died laughing ...' (when people didn't actually die from laughing) to be more emphatic / compelling a commendation?

If someone said 'I literally died twice from laughter ...' would that be doublepluscompelling?
> If by "tenets" of Hinduism you mean texts which have not been considered imperative for at least two millennia

That's a little disingenuous (not you in particular) because if anything is mentioned in those books they fall over themselves to mention them.

You indeed bring up an important point, there is no analogue of a Bible or Koran in Hinduism. I find Vedas/Upanishads to be more foundational while others might consider the much younger Gita more important. This grafting of the notion of a 'book' by British led to hilarious practices: swearing on the Gita in court. This means little to a Hindu although the British tried hard to evoke the response they wanted.

I am not claiming beef was a regular diet through Hinduism hinterland. I am saying that there is nothing in the religion that sanctions it. I think oral and written tradition are the more appropriate tool to use here (than archeology) and there is enough examples in that document beef as a part of diet (again not across the entire Hindu land).
The spanish girl is amazing.

Here is their paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.03809.pdf
I don't agree with you on several points, but I don't think it would be a good use of either of our time to get into a silly point-by-point rebuttal. I don't think I'd convince you Phoronix is a bad blog dressed up as a news source for ad revenue. Instead, I'll just address the last wrong point:

> A significant point of difference with LWN.net is that Phoronix doesn't require a subscription in order to read the content, which makes it appropriate for sharing.

LWN doesn't require a subscription to read the vast majority of its content. Period.

The only thing you need a subscription for (which can be as low as $3.50/mo for students or anyone else who feels they are low income) is reading the current weekly edition.

In return, there are no ads and you get some high quality journalism. It's difficult for me to explain how much better the writing is than Larabel's.
Look at opening a Monzo account, lets you have a monzo.me link to get paid in the UK.

Shame we don't have anything like Square Cash :(
Snarkly I will mention that this is the same company that 'HN darling' Elon Musk was part of prior to his current life. Everything that everyone hates about paypal existed back then.
I've completely blocked PayPal out of my life. I've been screwed over by them so many ways over the past 15 years it's impossible to count. I refuse to do any business which requires their services.
It was confusion about whether "workout" is the same as "work out"
Hint: This is the same for every student. If you want to work full-time you need to make your studies half-time.
This is where I stopped reading:

He writes that the upper class of FTE workers, who make up just one-fifth of the population, has strategically pushed for policies—such as relatively low minimum wages and business-friendly deregulation—to bolster the economic success of some groups and not others, largely along racial lines.

The idea that raising the top marginal tax rates 3-5% or raising the minimum wage 4 or 5 bucks will combat inequality is laughable.

The cognitive dissonance between the cause of class (and the related race) inequality and the policies suggested to combat it never fail to blow my mind.

Slavery was a legal, government subsidized industry. The Jim Crow south that systematically stripped the black community of their property rights was built on a system of state and federal laws. The highly regulated, highly subsidized mortgage loan industry had reams of racially divisive rules that barred the black community from building generational wealth during the most important period of general economic prosperity in perhaps the history of the world following WWII.

American governments spent 200 years systematically robbing various ethnic groups of their rights, but bullshit pieces like this blame it on affluent white people that vote for candidates that have ideological problems with the minimum wage.

Gimme a break.

The cause of economic inequality is several generations of government disrespect of individual property rights and monetary policy that slants competition toward those that can pool assets - banks.
*Abrahmic
Try these:
http://www.mathblog.dk/great-library/linear-algebra/

Or this:

Gilbert Strang lectures on Linear Algebra (MIT): http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL49CF3715CB9EF31D
47 states allow Alford pleas, as does the Department of Justice.
Caroline, you're giving me a version of 'that's just like, your opinion man', coupled with 'I don't like your tone'.

I understand the author better than you think. The author has a worldview of 'my life is hard because X', coupled with 'X is something most people can't relate to'.

My point is, everyone goes through 'my life is hard because X' - the solution is to work around it.

I offered a few options that have worked for me and people I know.

In regards to qualifications - people who have them don't go around asking, the qualifications are implicit in the value they bring to the table.

People who explicitly ASK for qualifications, are typically just being passive-aggressive, which's fine - it's just good to be aware of what you're doing.
It's not private information, it's information they gave me in exchange for a service.
> And as for zero purchase protection, you can use escrow services for significant purchases.

And that gets us back to paypal (which started up as an escrow for ebay afterall) or some equivalent. Bitcoin offers no help here.
Hello! It's been a bit since I dug into hyper, but that's surprisingly low. Just to check, did you compile this with optimizations enabled, like `cargo build --release`?
The Paradox of the Derivative
They can take advantage of glucose. Fructose still needs to processed by the liver, similarly to alcohol.
> The solution is for government programs to tax me and people like me to provide simple things that can help break the cycle of poverty.

It'd be even better to end institutionalized racism, institute a mass pardon program, and pay reparations to the victims of Nixon's stupid escalation of the war on plants:

At the time [1994], I was writing a book
about the politics of drug prohibition. I
started to ask Ehrlichman a series of
earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently
waved away. “You want to know what this was
really all about?” he asked with the
bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace
and a stretch in federal prison, had little
left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968,
and the Nixon White House after that, had two
enemies: the antiwar left and black people.
You understand what I’m saying? We knew we
couldn’t make it illegal to be either against
the war or black, but by getting the public
to associate the hippies with marijuana and
blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing
both heavily, we could disrupt those
communities. We could arrest their leaders,
raid their homes, break up their meetings,
and vilify them night after night on the
evening news. Did we know we were lying about
the drugs? Of course we did.”

- Legalize It All: How to win the war on drugs, http://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20160323102916/http://harpe...

edit: John Taylor Gatto [1] points out in one of his books that black families were pretty stable post-civil-war, until the governments started sending black men to prison for teh ganja. Children do better when they have a father around.

[1] https://www.JohnTaylorGatto.com/
Still looks a little competitive. Not everyone is wealthy enough to travel.
Annoying Function Notation (in math)
I put effort into learning the tools I use that are as important as the place where I store all the data. So it's a moot point.
ASSISTENCIA ROCA PORTO
Indeed. It began with slavery and stayed with us in various forms of oppression up to and including today. But America is great so we're going to take it back to Jim Crow.
Fantastic set of components for minimal code size.
Democratising Artificial Intelligence
I hope someone writes a book or they make this one into a movie. It would be awesome if the scammers had an account name using a very similar name or a unicode hack. Too bad they didn't have a better getaway plan.
Another possible reason - they may well have little choice!
Lists of top ranked universities are generally dominated by the US/UK. In this list the highest ranked German institution is at number 30: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...

It's always going to be hard to charge the same as a competitor when your product is inferior.
> NTs seem expert at knowing which of their emotional reactions are appropriate, so they can effortlessly express the appropriate emotions and suppress the inappropriate ones.

Emotional reactions and empathy are not consciously regulated on a basic level (at least not for me). Conscious masking of emotions still produces micro-expressions, for example.

By the way, emulating an emotional response is not uncommon for "regular" people, too, e.g. when attending a funeral where you don't care about the deceased or attending a wedding where you hate the bride or groom. I'd say it's an important skill for social survival.

(I guess it could be argued that empathy is kind-of a low-level emulation of emotional responses... at least in some situations?)
Yes. The former can be argued as more polite, because you're suggesting an alternate course of action (don't stand near wall), and the latter can be construed as an attack on a person's mentality (you're a shy person, don't be that way [that's bad]).
They closed my account (Ireland) in 2011, many phonecalls emails later they won't tell me why, I looked around back then and discovered bitcoin @4$, in hindsight my little bitcoin pile and PayPal induced curiosity was a positive, portion of the coins I haven't spent by now are worth into 6 figures now, so thank you shitpal

I might one day soon lodge complaint with data ombudsman if PayPal refuse to handover data stored on me
There are a couple of peculiarities of Haskell's module system which made it difficult, but yes, I agree that it took longer than it should have.

However, nowadays there is a decent dependency management and build tool! It's called "stack", as in "stack install xmonad". I never once had any dependency or other compile problems with stack. It simply always works. :-)
http://insideevs.com/zero-first-generation-chevrolet-volt-ba...

I have a 2013 Volt with 67K (50K ev) miles and there is, so far, no change in ev range.
Not enough information on the page to let me know what this does in detail.
I don't believe a word.
Ice, WSGI on the rocks: Python WSGI microframework inspired by bottle
Buffett’s Betrayal
> He holds Europe hostage by threatening to release large amounts of refugees into Europe

This is one of the key facts of the situation.

Logically then, if the Syria disaster is solved, Erdogan loses a lot of his power. Or in other words, the crackdown of Turkey is part of the Syria conflict.
I was referring to programming work only
Why does the threshold have to be "profound" for word choice and phrasing decisions?

There is a non-trivial difference in connotation between the two sentences.

In vernacular conversation "wallflower" can be used as a term to connote (strong) shyness or to indicate generalized presence on the periphery of an event. In the sentence from the article, "literal" helps to shift emphasis away from the "shy" connotation. Without it, or some other way to emphasize connotation, the sentence is easier to misinterpret as follows:

"..., and you tell them not to be too shy."