skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
But again what technical (as in operational, functional etc.) benefits would a social network built on a blockchain would have vs a standard website?

Unless you'll use some sort of a thick client you would still need an application server that would take the data which I'll assume you'll store in the blockchain and present it to the user.

How would a distributed database that need to hold even 0.001% of the information stored in say Facebook be even feasible on consumer devices?
Why would you want to wrap that data with expensive PoW/PoS algorithms and how would this give you any sort of control over your personal information considering it's a public (even if it's a private blockchain) database that anyone with access to it can store any copy or revision of it they would like.

I'm not trying to be coy or rude I simply do not understand the point of using a blockchain for any purpose other than finance, it gives you account consolidation, compliance, transaction and balance ledger all in one tool this is great but for anything else... I simply can't see it.
For EE? No, stick it out, and go to grad school too.
At the end of the day, programming is symbol manulation, and nothing beats representing symbols like text.
In the latter, do you mean thermal radiation or thermal conduction? I guess it doesn't make a huge difference because radiation hits you before you cam do anything about it, and conduction is impossible to get away from. But curious anyway.
How does an increased demand for loans lead to funding the Reagan tax cuts?
I don't know much about how other people think but I'm fairly certain that I favor auditory mode. When I write code I generally am in auditory mode and then expressing logic becomes fairly easy with text. Further, I believe abstractions like classes and objects, etc. tend to favor text/auditory expression.

Visual programming to me becomes very scattered and fragmented. Bits and pieces of logic seem to end up all over the place and become hard to keep a cohesive functionality together.
They're "not even wrong" (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong), just a waste of time
But this has zero explanation. It's more like an appendix than a cheatsheet. It lists all the flexbox commands you can use, but doesn't say a single word about what it is.

flex-direction: row (The flexible items are displayed horizontally, as a row) is a cheatsheet. flex-direction: row is just a command.
Obligatory plug: We're bringing it back!

Check out https://anvil.works - it's like VB, only for this century (the web) and using a sensible language (Python, both client and server).

We just took it to PyCon, and the reaction was pretty gratifying :)
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m...
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) does a good job of this I think. SSIS is made for manipulating data flows. The flow of data happens to be very well represented in many cases by visual network flow diagrams. Most of the common patterns of data flow are implemented as drag and drop widgets.

That said, as necessary, you can do pretty much anything in that environment as code if you want. The best thing about the language, though, is that /if/ you go down the path of coding something out instead of using a common pattern, it forces you to ask "Why am I doing something out of the norm here?" Sometimes you have a valid reason. Sometimes you don't and that question course corrects you back into a maintainable architecture. It's a very niche language (even mostly vendor locked down), but I think it's a great example of a visual programming environment that's mostly great to work in.
https://scholar.google.com/

The magic phrase to locate the literature you're interested in is "returns to education"
I really have no interest in building software for suckers though, I asked because I wanted to verify if the idea had real value to anyone :) I appreciate your feedback!
Creating Data Visualizations with D3, JavaScript, and SVG
Sorry, this isn't the only practical way for software companies. There are three main approaches: no mention at all (vague and bad for all parties), ownership of all related ideas developed on company time/company equipment [this is the only type of contract I will sign], and the company owns everything you do at any time.

Since both #2 and #3 have been used by companies, clearly #3 can't be the "only practical way".

> > Your game designer works for a year and invents 7 games. At the end of the year, she sues you, claiming that she owns 4 of them, because those particular games were invented between 5pm and 9am, when she wasn’t on duty.

This is a terrible example. If the game designer delivers you 7 games during the year, that's a pretty clear indication that they are for you and are works for hire under the contract.

Also, if you are hiring her for game design, then off hours, she can't design games, because that is directly competitive. She can, however, design software that manages greenhouses. And that is as it should be.

If there are any games she designed on her own time that she doesn't want to be yours, she wouldn't have given them to you. If she kept one, launched it herself, and made a ton of money, you would probably have a claim. But she has no claim to games she gave you.

[Could she still sue? Sure, every example can be made into some court case with a possible terrible outcome -- that's called life. But this is not a realistic problem.]
[Edit: Moved paragraph to top] I agree, too many people throw around "blockchain" as if it was a magic incantation.

However, focusing on the "decentralized" part of social networks, here are some possible goals/benefits:

1. You control your own content, in the sense of having a "walk away with my photos and posts" primary copy at all times.

2. Users can publish -- and subscribe -- without a single-point-of-censorship owned by a corporate or governmental gatekeeper.

3. More direct control over your "feed" of information so you can get what you want/need and be done, as opposed to Facebook's algorithms which put a higher priority on keeping you hooked into a stream of advertising.

4. Less "one platform to rule them all" lock in. Fundamentally Facebook doesn't want you to ever click out to another site with content. They want to do their best to force you to re-publish the same content in their own framework for their own ads.
When I read the title, I assume Grothendieck is a country. You know, because it says "Grothendieck is a country". So maybe you don't need to say "Grothendieck, the mathematician", but the title is specifically going out of its way to be as unclear as possible.
Ruby-Doc is Down
The author also created The Little Book of Rust Macros[1], which is an invaluable resource. They also are one of the top answerers for Rust questions on Stack Overflow[2]. Altogether a great asset for the community!

[1]: https://danielkeep.github.io/tlborm/book/

[2]: https://stackoverflow.com/users/42353/dk?tab=answers
How to Backup Blu-Ray on FreeNAS for Streaming to TV via Plex?
Imo this isn't about legislative of today, rather about the philosophy/politics of today responsible for the legislative of the future.

Today's cryptography is like the ice sculptures art, we could show a lot, but on unstable timeline.

The true art is going to come with the quantum computers and the governments will have to have legislative for someone sending messages to someone else because they won't have any other tool available.
If this was actually true, there would be no private college loan lenders -- they would all prefer to invest their money in the S&P 500 than in college students.
>down-voting isn't to ignore.

That's a good point, hadn't really thought of it that way. My apologies for being so confrontational.
> Cryptographic key never leaves your device

Isn't that a huge usability issue? I use multiple devices, phone, laptop, desktop. How do you propose being able to log into the same website on more than one device if the key is on the original device?

Also, have you reviewed Web Authentication specification? It sounds very similar.
http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/editorials/article154096449....
The above link takes you the Fresno Bee editorial board's justification to continue building moonbeam's legacy with total disregard for the California taxpayer accountability from our executive and our legislative areas of government. What is even more troubling is that the editorial board believes there is tons of money in the California and Federal Treasuries.
Last check, CA has a total debt obligation funded and unfunded climbing past $1.3 TRILLION DOLLARS. And now these esteemed supposedly (?) business board types think that addition of $300 to $500 billion or more to the state debt is a solid move. First off we are talking about 1800’s technology in the 21st century.
Furthermore, no one is talking about the pending $400 billion-dollar healthcare debacle coming our way and again, I repeat, there is no money in the bank to fund even this liberal dufus disaster. Then, of course, we have BART with 4-janitors who have collected over 1/2 million dollars in overtime last year. I think the editorial board needs to go back and write an editorial that requires competence and fiscal acumen from these two groups. On then would a totally prefunded project get the green light.
> "some whispers have said that the reason CEMU is closed source is they used parts of the Wii U SDK that were under NDA to bootstrap development"

I would bet money on that. I am not am emu dev myself, nor am I an expert at reverse engineering game consoles, but the progress that Cemu is making is blazing. Even for hacky HLE. Cemu is running circles around it's open source alternative. If they really cared about moving WiiU emulation forward, they could at least release the source code and not let others contribute. It's not like the emulation community is competing for money here ...right?

Who knows. Maybe the Cemu team will wait for more information to surface, maybe for some better documentation from the reverse engineering community, or some leaked documents from other sources. Then open up their code and play it off like it was always a level playing field.
That took a sudden turn! Normally I just go to Slate Star Codex when I want a mixture of sparkling insight and teleological fiction -- though at least there the fiction is clearly labelled.

Back in 2010 I made the prediction that (regardless of the truth) climate change would look increasingly like religion by 2020. Looks like my prediction is right on track.
Causation goes the other way: Reagan's prioritization of tax cuts over public education led to tuition increases, which lead to an increased demand for loans to pay the higher tuition.
Taking his own path: The world's leading maze designer
> It's not clear whether Venus or Mars is an easier target for colonization

Actually, despite my above pro-Venus talk, Mars is still an easier option. I wound up on a wiki-spiral just now reading about options for Venus- turns out plants would not work for converting that CO2. The process for CO2 conversion needs Hydrogen- and Venus has none.

We'd need some kind of trade-triangle between Mars, Venus and Jupiter, dumping CO2 from Venus to Mars, then moving H from Jupiter to Venus. We need to find some product Mars has that Jupiter wants, then we'd have it figured out.
> To really control my data and my online persona.

But HOW does blockchain give you "control over your data" in a way that uniquely requires a blockchain? You can do a heck of a lot just with existing tools, like asymmetric crypto and hashing.

The only use I can think of right now is to globally prove that user X really did publish Y at some time Z in the past. In other words, preventing anyone from "backdating" a piece of content.

Now, while that may be useful, it's not really offering you more control over your public persona. It's really just restricting what everyone can do in order to curb a certain kind of abuse.
These calculations seem fishy, for reasons stated above and others (e.g. why 20-year ROI? why exclude graduate degree holders?).

However, it is true that rising education costs are eating much of the ROI of attendance and lack of transparency has made it harder to see where that crossover point is.

But in a world in which the equity and college wage premiums are headed in the directions that they're headed, I would not give this advice to an intelligent 18-year-old.
> Your first ever job is at Google? At 24? And no loan debt? How is that even possible.

You go to school in Canada ($10k/year tuition) and do internships in the US ($8k/month salary). Not uncommon at all and doesn't require any family money.
Millennials are killing chains like Buffalo Wild Wings and Applebee's
But how is it different from hosting my own homepage (on tor or freenet)? It does everything you described without the blockchain fanciness.
No worries, I'll upvote it. ;)

I think he/she is right-ish about the supply-demand calculus on this; looking at history, overextended credit/margins often lead to nasty bubbles because of the distortion effects.
It's not a trick.

Most community don't offer 4 year degrees. When people are talking about community colleges they are generally talking about a place where you get an associates degree and then transfer.
Foundations of deep learning
>> Russia has shown they have tendencies towards nationalism and imperialism

"That's actually not true"

What about wide spread usage of George ribbons? What about cries about loosing Soviet territories? What about Nacy movement? What about constant shit talk in media? Etc, etc.

My observations are that Russia is spiralling into madness comparable to 1930 Germany. It is perhaps difficult to see while being inside of it but the sign are clearly observable from the outside.

I really wish that it is not like this. It is really saddening to observe this.
With articles like these, the PR submarine always comes to mind.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
It was a cool idea. That was its point, lower power for acceptable performance. It wasn't trying to be the fastest; their value proposition was being able to play a DVD on a SF NY flight on battery. But Intel pivoted and did that too.
Have you thought about inverting the idea, providing backups of cloud services?

I see a lot of people/companies operating under the false assumption that they don't have to backup data that's in the cloud and typically it's a lot harder than backing up files on a hard drive.
One size does not fit all.

UI creation is best handled by a WYSIWYG editor, animations are nice to visualize on a timeline, and math formulas are clearest when written as is.

Picking the wrong model creates a mess. Try to express a sorting algorithm as a flowchart. It would be too difficult to follow. Yet a business process is great to model as a flowchart. A picture is only sometimes worth a thousand words.

Take a look at the papers published from VPRI, the research org founded by Alan Kay. They have built languages for graphics, parsing, stream processing--each optimized for its particular domain. They could have used a general purpose language but it would have resulted in much more code than necessary.

So the question everyone should be asking is: why hasn't a multi-paradigm programming environment taken off?
It would seem we've been able to see the real Nigel Farage, now that he has moved away.
In a modern context it may seem like nobody could ever have believed Icarus, but that's unlikely. People look back on the 'great' thinkers for what they got right and ignore thinks like a great logician comparing volcanoes to the bowel movements of animals. Consider all of the outrageous things people firmly believe in a religious context (not pointing fingers there is plenty of things to go around even if you exclude whatever your personal faith is.)

So, unless you have very firm evidence the tale may have be out before the moral.

As to using the walking dead to make a point, think this through a little more. Because it's pure circular reasoning. A is true because of A.
Maybe I don't understand the realities of networking as well as I though. But my understand was that once packets enter my ISP's network, on my home connection, the rest of the way they get routed to me with protocols other than BGP. That's quite a lot of routing being done with non-BGP protocols.
Maybe college is too expensive -- maybe it's expensive because there is a very high demand for well educated people. In other words, in my field, computer science, you will meet very few immigrants without a hard won master's degree or better. They are paying premium prices for these degrees, and they are getting the jobs that come with them. You can't simultaneously argue that the job market is being divided by STEM knowledge and that learning about STEM is a waste of time.
A different perspective on building iOS apps: Part 1
Tackle JavaScript fatigue with this Front End study guide
I think doing the work to make your code self documenting is required. Some might consider that unneeded, but after after looking back at my own code years later, what was blatantly clear at the time, it no longer obvious years later.

And I would say you are the FIRST person to judge the clarity of your code. Who knows who the last person will be...
Yeah those videos make me wonder. But my understanding from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions
is that humans are quite a bit more resilient than structures. So a shock wave that utterly destroys an otherwise strong structure may not kill a human. However that seems related purely to the atmospheric shock wave itself. I guess shrapnel (even dirt), building collapse, maybe even "throwing the person" (so the ground, rather than atmospheric effects, kills) would greatly add to the indirect ways of dying. But is it most likely thermal radiation that actually does you in?
A different perspective on building iOS apps: Part 2
unless your a trust fund baby like myself and your funding source is your parents.
HashiCorp Vault with AWS EC2 auth back end with multiple AWS accounts
I mean, there has to be a happy medium. 5mph collisions won't kill or even injure anyone in any car. There's no reason for a car to take any damage at that speed. But yeah, 35+? Crumple away.

It just seems like it shouldn't have to be either/or. Is material science not advanced enough to find some combination of parts that can sustain a low speed impact with no damage but crumple safely in a higher-speed impact?
Well it's a theoretical economics concept. The $20 bill is an opportunity, nothing more. A pretty good deal of course, but if you are pedantic you could defend the standpoint that you did have to do something to get it: first, get lucky enough to be there, notice it, then bend over and maybe clean it. So it's not "free", just a pretty good deal.

The same thing applies to getting a job for instance. Take job X. If job X was available and worth doing at wage $, someone would be doing it. So why bother applying ?

So what it really means is that the semi-strong and strong form of the efficient market hypothesis is bullshit: there are plenty of opportunities in the market, you're just not seeing most of them.

I would argue that nearly everyone doesn't even try to see opportunities.
CS is one of the few fields where you can get even the best jobs without a degree. You will have to clearly demonstrate your skills somehow but if you manage that not having a formal degree is no barrier. This is a massive step up from most other fields where a degree is—for arbitrary, historical or even legal reasons—completely non-negotiable.

I didn't finish my degree but still got a pretty awesome (and high-paying) job—even one that "officially" required a Masters degree. I got it through a mix of writing articles, giving talks and networking. (Connections are, unfortunately, one of the only consistent ways to get around obstacles to getting a job.)
Way back in a previous life I made a living building a visual programming tool and language to specify simulations. After many years of work it became clear that visual programming works very well in industries that already have a well established visual paradigm. We had great success with simulating hydraulic systems by letting folks specify them with standard piping and instrumentation diagrams. The cooling system simulation for the space station simulator ended up being built that way with our system, as were many simulations of nuclear power plant cooling systems. However, after you do P&i diagrams and electronic schematics you very quickly run out of well established visual paradigms. Uml is just not useful in the way that a piping diagram is.

As to text, a colleague once described the best feature of a text specification of code was "visual rhyme". You know, when you can look at a block of code and feel how it ebbs and flows. That's from the old days, I don't know if functional code rhymes like Fortean did.
1) your content and posts are online it doesn't prevent anyone from copying them, not to mention that while you can design a blockchain and that allows you to permanently delete content it doesn't prevent anyone from storing revisions of the blockchain that had that content or republishing that content again; sure it won't be signed with your key but those drunk photos you took during spring break will still be there.

2) There is still a single point of censorship; distributed internet isn't distributed unless you control the physical infrastructure a government can simply shut your blockchain down.

3) RSS

4) What does this has to do with a blockchain?

Again nothing here requires a blockchain, some of it might actually be harder to implement in the manner you speak off with one.
It's one avenue of exploration to (further) commoditize programming.
It's not so much about Tesla. Tesla is following the same trajectory that a lot of other consumer electronics have. i.e., You go from the PC model to the smartphone SoC model. You do everything in house, cut out dealers, get rid of interoperabilty and throw in some DRM/obfuscation if people try to make aftermarket parts or repair them. Add to that the fact that the govt. will anyway exert more regulatory control with all things autonomous. You end up with a segment that is heavily regulated, with little choice for end-users. Much like healthcare or telecom.
This is an atypical post from Scott Aaronson, no?

I feel like things kind went off the deep end in the last section there.
> But how is it different from hosting my own homepage

How is a "distributed social network" different from "a homepage"? ...Really?

It implies a hell of a lot more than a static website. Subscriptions. Message-passing between nodes. Establishing (and breaking) bidirectional friends-links. Protocols for content-types, privacy restrictions, and metadata...

> without the blockchain fanciness

Yes, that is intentional. Like I said in my post, I'm very cynical about how much "blockchain" actually brings to the table. I'm focusing purely on the "decentralized" part.
One clever UI way around this would be to not use Enter in the master password field.

Instead use something on the homerow like "jkl" to end every password. Then the input field just accepts whenever /.*jkl/ matches.

This mostly solves the "wrong focus" problem because hitting Enter is no longer part of the muscle memory. Of course you could still enter it into a shared Google doc or something else that discloses without Enter, so it's only a partial solution.
The Manchester attacker was reported many times as an extremist, and had the ISIS flag on his car. To suggest that he would have been caught if only the Food Standards Authority has constant read-access to your drunk teenage loveletters is ridiculous.

We need more actual police officers to do more actual police work.
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...

"We find a pass-through effect on tuition of changes in subsidized loan maximums of about 60 cents on the dollar, and smaller but positive effects for unsubsidized federal loans."
NASA Rocket Will Release Artificial Clouds Lighting Up the Mid-Atlantic Coast