skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
But crypto is built from math, which is available to anyone who possesses a brain. Even if you locked down all the academic output related to encryption you can't ensure no one will discover another way to hide and transmit secrets either around or through your usually-private-except-for-serious-threats communications network. You'd have better luck trying to lock down harmful bioagents and fissionable materials, but as you alluded, as long as these technologies exist the world faces a security threat. It seems to me the only way to combat these threats is to construct a society where individuals never feel the need to leverage their increasing power, a police state where anyone's communications can be inspected or abused at will by an agent, a heirarchy, or an algorithm seems antithetical to such a society.
Google uses plenty of Python, no?

I don't think threading is a relevant factor for many of those decisions. Perf and static typing, sure.
SV is significantly overrepresented with east and south Asians, compared to the general US public. If you wanted to make SV match the general US demographics, they'd have to hire more white people.

Just because black people specifically are underrepresented in SV doesn't mean that it's (racially) non-diverse.
The Easy Way to Setup PostgreSQL 10 Logical Replication
> MongoDB is schema-free, allowing you to create documents without having to first create the structure for that document. At the same time, it still has many of the features of a relational database, including strong consistency and an expressive query language.

The author clearly has a different definition of "strong consistency" than most. I don't see how any claims of consistency (in a data usage, not CAP sense) can be made of a database that can't properly store a number as a number or even guarantee that it's a number at all.

Also, does anyone actually like the Mongo query language? It was cute when I first saw it but I pity anyone trying to do anything complicated by manually writing those JSON strings.
Zero. FTFA: "The effort isn’t intended to reduce the federal workforce, Mulvaney said, but should free up employees for more productive tasks."
I think Feynman's statement is a wee bit over the top, and I will say that being able to teach complex things to novices is definitely an art and certainly one which I do not possess
I spent a few years as a full time contractor and kind of had a chuckle at this.

I worked on a truly awful mess of a codebase. It was the kind of codebase through which many devs had passed, and many generations of best practices. One part was straight JavaScript. Another had some jquery. Another had backbone.js - the perpetrators were all former full time employees. The product had never launched.

I generally worked 8 hours and signed off promptly to work on my own projects. I did quality work. I viewed myself as a hired gun who was paid to do a job. In the end I was at the company longer than any of their actual full time employees (who left because they didn't like working on the crappy code or were stressed because of company politics) and was the only developer left to take the product to launch.

Employees and employers often think that contractors are vampires, and many are, but you'll find the good ones are practically immune to whatever skeletons you've got in the closet and will get the job done.
Open market means balancing capitalism vs democracy. Property rights, fair and impartial judiciary, regulations to promote competition, and so forth.

Whereas free market means might makes right. AKA feudalism, corporatism, kleptocracy, neo-reactionary, fantasy land, etc. Basically whatever nonsense the Heritage Foundation stooges are paid to peddle.

Even though I grew up listening to the Sex Pistols, I still have no idea what anarchy is, idealized or not. I just assume its more Lord of the Flies than some hippy free love commune.
IMHO, this statement never hold for Maths : since all math reasoning is just the construction of a logical and symbolic proof based on a set of existing theorems and the underlying axioms, it requires the student to :

1. be familiar to the logical reasoning : what «implies» or even «for any x» means.
2. know the relevant set of theorem and axioms used in the demonstration.

You could probably illustrate what a mathematical result implies in some real-life example, but you won't be «explaining» it.

Quantum physics is a really good example of this, because it's not that difficult to understand if you look at it with the mathematical PoV : it's basically linear algebra in infinite dimension, you have vectors (in the space of «functions of |R³») and linear applications on these vectors (with all properties of such applications, like eigenvalues and eigenvectors), etc. But if you try to «explain» it in simple terms, you're going to distort the reality to fit in the macroscopic-scaled human representation of the world and you'll probably say things that won't be true.
I don't know - people get attached to their belongings pretty quickly. In your example, if you invested 1000 $ in Bitcoin, watched it grow to $100k and then back to $70k then you would feel like you lost the cash equivalent of brand new car. It would be very painful, despite the fact that original gains came so easily.
> For every complex system, there is usually an underlying simpler, though not accurate, model that makes grasping the broader concepts easier

One doesn't stop at that model. (Feynman didn't.)

It's used as scaffolding, later torn down, to organize thoughts. By continuously proceeding downwards, in a fractal nature, filling in gaps, tearing and replacing where needed, the larger structure always stands ready to contextualise.

This helps hold the audience's interest. It also lets the mind, by itself, fill in gaps, promoting retention as well as pedagogical efficiency.
The essence of biology: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6fupwz/the_ess...

(I'm actually really hoping for someone to show up and say, "Um, gosh, I don't know how to say this, but that's just so wrong..." And then how.)
Taken to the extreme, simple advocacy for a particular group crowds out advocacy for other, disjoint groups... putting them at a marginal disadvantage. There's a 'line of OK', and where it lies is is a multivariate equation of justice, utility, harmony, and context.

Having read more and more YCombinator News comments on these topics recently... I'm starting to understand that there are voices out there that decry any perceived sexism at all, no matter the circumstances. I honestly find cries of 'sexism against men' that completely discount the real world context to be rather gauche.
To be fair, I have a hard time seeing a child invent such a moniker.
bitcoin is not decentralized because all transactions are on a single public ledger. How the ledger is computed and verified is distributed however the product is a single central source of truth. There is nothing centralized about having a single objective "reality". Decentralized systems do not have a single source of truth and by their very nature are inconsistent.

In other words, whether the blockchain was computed by one central bank or individual miners doesn't change the nature of bitcoin in it's use. Which is a centralized public ledger.

I wouldn't be surprised if bitcoin was an attempt to shine a light on the black market. Similar to how Tor was created to hide the activities of state spooks.
I have, and do. Physics 101, or in my case computer science 101 are not the world. Humans are gifted teachers (probably unique among animals in our instinct to simplify while teaching). I love distilling things down into teachable parts. It's hard, interesting work.

But I also do research, and I absolutely do not expect deeply technical topics like advances in aerospace engineering or gene regulation or cosmology to have "simple explanations" that I can understand. I accept that I won't understand them without years of effort, and I won't denigrate experts in those fields because of my limitations.

I tell people to come up with elevator pitches for complex work all the time, but I don't evaluate the quality of a thinker by the quality of their elevator pitch.
For some context, it is relatively easy to cheat at the IMO if a team wants to do so. See for example this thread: https://www.quora.com/How-did-North-Korea-cheat-in-the-IMO-i...

It is my understanding that plenty of people do not believe North Korea cheated in 2010 (and also, plenty of people believe that other specific teams have cheated in specific years). Furthermore, it is my understanding that the North Korean team leader in recent years has not seen the problems before the contest (relying instead on the South Korean translation of the problems), thus removing the most obvious mechanism of cheating. Unfortunately, I do not know of a public source of this information and accordingly I have not verified it myself.
Laptops ship with VGA ports because the business world is full of conference rooms where the projector only has a VGA cable.
> A lot of deep theorems are trivial when you fully understand all relevant definitions.

A lot of deep theorems comes down to properly choosing the definitions so that the theorems are true.
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/
>USA did recover

Has it? I'm pretty sure most of the country's (and let's be real, many other nations) currents problems are directly related to actions undertaken by Dubya and his despicable administration.
I really worry about the defense of the US in coming decades. Huge issues plaguing the F-35 program [1]. Other programs that aren't going well with navy vessels. [2] Massive waste in general and "losing" a ton of equipment. [3] Plus this.

It's clear it is not about actual defense of the US, but about extracting as much wealth as possible from all of us; the tax payers.

This is simply not sustainable. Trillions of dollars spent on military programs that don't really give us "high-tech" weaponry and defense.

[1] http://warisboring.com/the-f-35-is-a-terrible-fighter-bomber...

[2] http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-us-navys-expensive-new-wars...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-burie...
Ask HN: It is worth the effort of learning Mandarin?
Taking into account the rise of the Chinese economy in the last years, it is worth the effort of learning Mandarin ?

Do you consider that speaking the language can boost the chances of doing business/working in China/for tech Chinese companies?
What about medical tourism? Seems like a possible solution for non-emergency care. Paul Buchheit tweeted a few years ago that he wanted to fund the "Uber of medical tourism". The tweet seems to be gone (not sure why?), but here's my previous comment about it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10731415
Well, those are not targeting the enterprise
The future of cross-browser testing, device testing, and the Internet in general
This is like an "eternal September" - when tabs vs spaces comes up each year, most commenters have never seen one of the rather simple ways of using tabs correctly.
Such beings have no social knowledge.
I know for a fact he has over 25 years experience in the markets.

The concepts don't translate, that's for sure. However, to claim that Facebook is worth something if they just keep collecting data and we see nothing being done with that, is just wishful thinking.

Amazon invests in research and built a PaaS/SaaS service that's worth a lot. It innovates on several products like Kindle and Echo. Owns patents that are worth something.

What's the ACTUAL commercial value that Facebook is bringing to the world and to people that's making it so worthwhile? Sharing pics? Getting customized newsfeeds? Having yet another channel to communicate with your aunt or with that customer service? What do we lose if Facebook goes away tomorrow?
Any style of regulation is non existent
I mean yea, take breaks. But when I do contracting I'll take an exactly X minute break before resuming and still work for 8 hours.
"if not a, then not b" is equivalent to "if b then a" and is neither equivalent to nor the opposite of "a implies b". I'm having trouble understanding your point under these confusions. Is it that being able to explain is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for understanding?
I'd like to see "vs Postgres".
I see what you are getting at (i.e., health insurance should be for catastrophic events rather than routine visits.)

The problem is that in the US, routine visit costs are wildly inflated. Try going in to get a vaccine or a cold and you get wildly dispersed and large quotes. This is because the insurance system is two things in one: a real insurance plan + a negotiated ratecard. When you go for routine/preventative care with insurance, you get fairly reasonable values on the rate card -- without it, they can (and usually do) charge you anything, and often you don't even know the cost until afterwards.

Until there are realistic rates for simple/routine/preventative needs, I don't see how insurance can be restricted to catastrophic cases only.
HIPAA's civil and criminal penalties already apply to individuals.

OTOH, Uber and it's employees are not HIPAA covered entities, nor, generally, are doctors in India. So I don't see how anyone could have violated HIPAA here.
Not the smallest, not even close.

http://noplabs.com/cpm50/cpm50.html
>"I intended to visit China in the near future -- but I've booked a trip to Taiwan instead, almost entirely because Taiwan doesn't​ require me to get a visa."

You still get a visa to enter Taiwan. It's just a "visa on arrival" as opposed to needing to obtain a visa prior to travel. Visa policies are reciprocal between countries. China and the US both charge citizens from each other's countries to visit for tourist purposes and that must be paid prior to travel. Tourist visa policies and immigrations polices have very little if anything to do with each other.

I think you might be short changing yourself if your only reason for not visiting mainland China is solely because they require a visa. It's less than a hundred bucks, it's basically a tourist tax. You likely won't regret it.
This is getting old, folks.

Not to the victim it ain't.
There were existing third party apps that they forced to shut down. Understandable if it's competing against a native app, but that wasn't the case.
I hear ya. I don't know how we got to this state, and I'm active player. Complacency?

The silver lining is that Trump was a wake up call. Many, many of my non-political friends contacted me and asked "What do we do? How do I start?" Our boring party meetings have triple the attendance. Any thing that needs doing now gets done.

For my part, I started a book study group, mentoring my friends how to be activists. For example, an upcoming homework assignment is testifying at a public hearing (local city or county council). Most of us have never even attended a meeting before.

Exciting times.
Coinbase Disables Account for Ross Ulbricht Legal Defense Campaign
Imagine if there was no longer war not because we found peaceful means of resolution; but because the weapons systems became so complex and overwrought that they no longer functioned in war.
I guess when you're paid hourly it matters, but ya, my work day is a bunch of 20 to hour long blasts of coding, interspersed with wandering around the office or bouncing on the giant yoga ball they gave me instead of a chair. Dunno how someone could keep on the screen for more than a couple hours straight.
How to Set Your Agents Up for Success Through Collaboration
Maybe the $13 Billion dollar lesson here is to stop launching war machines across the globe?

but seriously, the gross fiscal negligence in this sector is appalling, and it's been the case since the start of the Military Industrial Complex.
>A big reason preventing me from quitting my day job and working on my side business full-time is cost of healthcare.

Working as intended.
The difference between IP and email adresses is that one is trivially enumerated, the other is not.

Any internet-facing server that responds on port 22 will get several (up to hundreds) of failed login attempts per day. Just install something like fail2ban and watch your logs.
> impulse response, intermodulation distortion, phase shift, and a host of other

I get the rest, but phase shift? Are you taking about the shift between different frequencies producing a fake doppler, or something else?
Who said that the price must stabilize?

bitcoin is a digital commodity with a very unique property: the supply of newly minted coins is pre-determined and does not rely on market forces (because hash-rate retargets to achieve the plan regardless).

In general the price of any commodity is determined by supply and demand. Aggregated supply is S0+S1, where S0 are newly mined coins (known) and S1 is market supply (unknown). Aggregated demand is generated by the market (unknown).

So in the price equation you have two unknowns which are unlikely to be stable in the future. The cost of mining should not affect the price in the late game.

Here is what Satoshi had to say about this:
http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/bitcointalk/65
The Ford class could be written off now and only be a ~$50 billion boondoggle. That's a lot less than a trillion.
I ran into a doozy in our production Mongo 3.2 replica set just this week, where initial sync completely failed because the oplog was growing too fast. It seems this class of errors was actually fixed ( https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/core/replica-set-sync/#initi... ) in 3.4, which also fixed a number of the data reliability issues you mentioned (see https://jepsen.io/analyses/mongodb-3-4-0-rc3 ). But since we hadn't upgraded, the only way to fix things was to throttle back our write-heavy background tasks during a period of low usage - definitely not the kind of thing you want to have to explain to users.

At the end of the day (see my other comment in this thread), I'm bullish about the developer experience of Mongo/Meteor, and I think that 363 days a year of significantly increased developer productivity is worth the 1 day of devops hell that might ensue from that stack choice, and 1 day of realizing that your performance problems all stem from Mongo query performance being much more reliant on manually creating indices on fields vs. an unindexed Postgres table of the same size. Sigh. On the reliability end, it helps that our (largely append-only) data model is such that inconsistencies are possible to clear up manually if needed. But on those couple days a year, I'm definitely not a Mongo fan.
I really liked this article for this kind of thing :

https://kkovacs.eu/cassandra-vs-mongodb-vs-couchdb-vs-redis
ISP Fought a Secret Surveillance Order, Court Denied It Access to Relevant Law
Trailing whitespace drives me batty! The only reason I can come up with for it is sloppiness.
If you want to learn how to secure software then learn how to hack. It will give you an insight into the tools and techniques used to breach systems and especially give you an insight on how many attack vectors there are.

Kali Linux and the tutorials for that are the Arduino of hacking.
The atomic type doesn't provide the necessary fences automatically. Operations on it have various sorts of fencing, but these do not necessarily connect in the way you think they do. The partial initialisation problem of creating a struct and publishing a pointer happens for the atomic types too, as they don't (and should not!) do everything with sequential consistency.
The problems of the new weapons systems sound bad, but I recall all the V-22 and F-22 naysayers. They're both expensive, but they're also the best in the world and flying everyday.

It's hard to tell when a weapons system under development in is trouble, and when it's just working out its kinks. Compared to past projects, the Ford class isn't all that far outside the projected budget.
on a same note: why does instagram hate on non-mobile UI?

on desktop the constant ping to install an ios app, but you're on x86 man. that constant prompt of the camera button when I'm on a x86. it may have worked when mobile was your roots, but you have to grow beyond mobile-only to at least allow other views.

granted somebody like Benedict Evans would say x86 is dead, but why kill the views, its cheap to produce ?
A kid just told me "I know Python, I did the games." Facepalm.
What types of programs are impacted by the lack of low overhead synchronous IPC?
It's the other way around: First was the concept, then the agreement which words we use to describe them.

> If you skip out the part of the analogy where you actually return to the complex terminology you're simplifying, you haven't produced understanding

Billions of people know what a telephone does and how to use one without understanding τῆλε ("tele-", distant) and φωνή ("phone", voice, talk, language). They all get the concept and nobody would argue that they need to understand the terminology as well.

Or: I can teach you to play chess without teaching a single chess-specific term. Yes, other players will laugh at you when you call the pawns "smurfs", but when you understand how to handle your smurf-army, opponents will stop laughing after hearing you announcing "death by smurf-supported horse in 2 turns". (Though they'll definitely hate you for calling a knight a horse ;).
When I first started programming I had to share a single terminal with the rest of the school, so I wrote my programs on paper first. I used graph paper so that my handwriting would be monospaced.
There are two very different reasons for this same answer: the don't care vs the don't know. Not caring is fine, not knowing is concerning.
No, the best solution is to only allow login by SSH keys. No passwords => brute-forcing is impossible. So your threat model for someone gaining access no longer includes someone using weak passwords.
Mr. Reeves! Holy sh*t, I'm honored! I hope I didn't come down too hard on Beeminder, I certainly didn't mean to. I honestly think you guys are one of the only companies with the balls to do penance right. Imho I really don't think the majority of people understand just how powerful it can be.

On another note, so much of my research that has gone into this has come from your site. You guys are an amazing example of brave transparency. What you guys have shared publicly has been incredibly helpful to me while trying to posture with a way to innovation in this space. So thank you so much for that!

I appreciate you chiming in here as well and the resources you shared. I'd love to run other ideas in this space past you as I'm sure you have more experience than just about anyone.

Lastly I'd also love to pick your brain on Pact, I'm curious if you have any insight into what happened? It seems like it's been abandoned, but it still has a ton of users that want to use it.
Military-sponsored research is one advantage that results from these large-scale advanced weapon design projects.
I appreciate you taking the time to point out loopholes that need fixing.
Health sharing co-ops have been at this for some time, based on Christian principles.

Samaritan Ministries, e.g., is $500/month for family and generally pays 100% of medical expenses, though no guarantees.

Our monthly check goes directly to someone else in the group. Minimal overhead for admin.

Also grandfathered in the ACA.