skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Matrices are not fundamental or interesting by themselves as just Excel-like grids of numbers. The reason we care about them is because they are a convenient notation for a certain class of functions.

I have to catch a flight so I don't have time to explain this fully, but the key points are:

1/ A "linear function" is a function where each variable in the output is "linear" in all the variables of the input (i.e., a sum of constant multiples of the input variables). e.g. f(x,y) = (x + 3y, y - 2x) is a linear function, but g(x, y) = (x^2, sin(y)) is not.

2/ All linear functions can be represented by a matrix. The `f` I mentioned above corresponds to the matrix:

[ 1 3
-2 1 ]

3/ The rules of matrix multiplication are defined so that multiplying by the matrix of a linear function corresponds to applying that function.

For example, again using the definitions above:

f(7, 8) = (31, -6)

And notice that we get the same thing when we do matrix multiplication:

[ 1 3 * [ 7 = [ 31
-2 1] 8 ] -6 ]

4/ Matrix multiplication also corresponds to function composition. If `f` is as defined above, and `h` is defined by h(x, y) = (-3y, 4x + y), then the matrix for h is

[ 0 -3
4 1 ]

and the function `f ο h` you get by applying `h` and then `f` is (you can check this...)

f ο h(x, y) = (12x, 4x + 7y)

The matrix for this functions happens to be

[ 12 0
4 7 ]

But, lo and behold, this matches matrix multiplication:

[ 1 3 * [ 0 -3 = [ 12 0
-2 1 ] 4 1 ] 4 7 ]

4/ Why do we care about linear functions? Well, linear functions are interesting for a lot of reasons, but one in particular is that (differential) calculus is all about approximating arbitrary differentiable functions by linear ones. So you might have some weird function but, if it's differentiable, you know that "locally" it is approximated by some (constant plus a) linear function
:) The incentive all good corporate robots need, to fund research is generally completed research funded by the public. We know this. Don't worry yourself too much. We'll call you when we need a freeloader.
Yeah. I revisited this thread today hoping someone gave you an answer. I'm curious how they're handling it too.
I want to see the trend of maximal libraries in javascript now.

Show HN: 2 MB JavaScript library for building front end applications with a lot of useful interactive ui components.

like https://github.com/nlp-compromise/compromise
How about this: You have a vulnerability and you disclose, your company ceases to exist.

You have a vulnerability and you fail to disclose, your company ceases to exist and all your C-level execs go to jail.
Energy Efficiency in Programming Languages
I don't believe that odds in favor of a player happen in lotteries, except for rare 'bugs' in the game design, which are fixed as soon as the organizer spots them.

A more probable explanation are addicts or money laundering.
Hosted services are compared differently. And I think among those Slack won for now due to a combination of better UX, free intro tier and luck.
Cubicles were considered the worst of both worlds. No proper privacy because there is not enough sound blocking and the faux walls isolate people and prevent collaboration.
How would they control the odds of winning? Luck aside, and especially when you buy lottery tickets in bulk, the odds are definitely against the player. Is there something I'm not aware of?
Big discussion of a similar post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15260102
Is there no way to read this without being a Social Media prisoner?

Facebook delights not me, nor twitter either.
The A.I. “Gaydar” Study and the Real Dangers of Big Data
I'm not sure it's a good argument to take up the biggest companies and then tally up effects of a micro improvement. You could argue for all kinds of complexity increasing changes resulting in %0.01 efficiency improvements this way.
I'm also different from most Americans because I'm British but yes both of those hold true for the UK.

I have considered an iPhone down the line though because Apple focuses more on privacy and that is something I do care about.
PDFs come from PostScript. PostScript was invented in 1984. The Apple LaserWriter, introduced in 1985, was the biggest selling early PostScript printer. It had a 12 MHz processor, 1.5 MB of memory, and communicated at 0.225 Mbps.

To make this work effectively, printers would cache fonts. That saved on overall file size, which was important for storage and transmission. But the real driver was rendering speed. Most documents are pages of text at a small number of sizes and there are a small number of letters.

If you're going to print 300 lower-case "e" characters, all in 10.5 point Times New Roman, it would have been ridiculous to do the hard work of rendering the bitmap from vector each time. You render it once, cache the bitmap, and then just plop the bitmap in the right spot.

I know this because circa 1993 one client had me build a custom font that varied letterforms slightly to mimic a hand-lettered effect. They ran these weekly newspaper ads for their big wine store, and the were paying a guy to hand-draw the whole thing. They wanted to keep the casual look, but save on the cost. (And I presume the guy was kinda tired of writing the same things over and over, but I never met him.)

I learned enough PostScript to make it happen, decomposed each letter into strokes, and then drew the strokes with slightly different alignment each time. It worked fine in simple tests, but the first time I rendered a page, I thought I had broke the printer. Instead of the printer's top speed of 8 pages/sec, a full page took over 15 minutes.

So as usual with "why don't they just" questions, the answer is, "because 'just' is sweeping some things under the rug". It was harder than it looked at first glance.
My comment is about the US not being for free trade. Your comment is irrelevant.
Slides for the talk: https://ds9a.nl/dna/
> with B/G deployments

Why do we call it that now, instead of A/B deployment like we used to?
400,000 people in the UK had data ‘potentially’ stolen in Equifax hack
I think it’s easy to reversed TOP floor for quiet working environment and noisy environment at lower level.

Looking at Singapore has an office look similar to Apple Park spaceship. Directors, professors and councillors are working in open space, I don’t see why not?
Topological sort on cells based on formula references.

Excel sheets are often highly convoluted in cell cross-references in formulas. It would help to have a clean-up mechanism that performs a topological sort on all the cells with formulas and puts them in a more natural order. It would help to be able to identify the backward references even if the cells are not automatically rearranged.
They have premium content which can be streamed. Perhaps not Netflix-like in there business model.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/movies-and-tv
I remember a sermon about god and fatherhood in which the pastor explained that god's commands must be followed because god loves us and god wants to protect us. The pastor explained god's wrath towards those who fail to follow him as the wrath of love. As an example, he told how one day his young daughter had run into the street and almost been hit by a truck. Afterwards he hit her repeatedly. He said he hit her, and was angry with her, not becaues he hated her, but because he loved her and wanted to protect her from wanting to run into the streat again. To my mind, this fatherlike aproach to power and control IS the patriarchy:

In christianity
- god is the father of all men
- the pastor is refered to as "father"
- the father is refered to as father

All of them are there to protect and all of them must be obeyed.

And it feels to me that the police are also a kind of father. They are also there to protect and they too must be obeyed.

I do see a technocracy as being a patriarchy as well. After all it's not just Xi, but Xi Dada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnRo9AMT8FI

And he too is there to protect and he too must be obeyed.

Edit: And this is what I hate about HN. I spent time thinking about and writing this post. And the more time you spend writing a comment on HN, the fewer people will read it.
But am I the only one thinking that maybe we are trying to solve the wrong kind of problem?

If we had spent the same amount of money into creating a grid of mini-train I believe that most cities would already have some working prototype...

And mini-train is a control problem that we could solve yesterday...

(With mini train I mean something roughly big as a car but that is constrained to move in some predefined path, it will means that they could move way faster than cars and be more space efficients...)
This is the source for the website at https://javascript.info/ . It's actually quite good - I'm reading about garbage collection at the moment. Looking forward to the inheritance/prototype section, something that's never quite stuck for me.
Keep the good of Facebook, throw out the bad, replace it with better.

The good: Connection to and updates from long-unseen friends, family and acquaintances; community organizing; universality.

The bad: Placing our thoughts, ideas, memories, pictures, opinions and habits into a closed, for-profit ecosystem with dubious ethics and the tendency to meddle with the presentation of that content (and the content itself) like a scolding, self-serving parent. Opaque content curation designed, at best, to maximize advertising revenue.

Better: Placing the above in the hands of individual users: self presentation, feed curation entirely under user control.

Existing technologies such as RSS, open IDs and authentication, blogging software, etc, can, glued together with the right protocol TBD, to allow individuals to have more control over their own data and identity, while still allowing all of the good that Facebook and other social media actually bring to the world. Individuals host their own equivalent of the "Facebook wall" (or hire a host), and can subscribe to other "walls". Posting on your "wall" can have different levels of security - available to trusted audience or public, rather like Facebook is. Only, the user owns it. A free, open-source protocol that emphasizes interoperability and user control would allow devs to create any kind of client that suits them.

Revenue through consultation and marketing the deep expertise that comes from knowing the protocol inside out.
How does that differ from property taxation?
More like the computing world has rebooted itself 1-2 times.

First there were institutional computers, the big irons (or dinosaurs as the web kiddies love to call them these days).

then came the microcomputer, and it spread computing to people that had barely heard about it. This largely rebooted the thinking about computing.

Then came the smartphone, and similarly it brought in a whole mass of people that had minimal interest for the earlier iterations. And thus we seem to have another reboot going.

The reboot is as much mental and social as it is technical btw. There is a technical layer to it sure, as there has to be some amount of hardware and software to draw people in. But what really reboots things is when the number of people that come in overwhelm those that are already in, and thus the newcomers have time to form their own mental and social models of how things should be.
Question:

I started a JS project lately, I tried to write it as modernly as possible (using as many ES6 features[1] as I could), and yet I stumbled on difficulties that I blame to the lack of type system and polymorphism.

I'm considering writing my project in a typed language that compiles to JS, such as Scala or Haskell. But I would have to learn that language basically from the start.

Is it a good idea and if so which language would you recommend?
Is this including snowmobile?
The only git tool that really stuck with me was "SmartGit".
Great log view and rebasing/reordering and squashing of commits with drag and drop.
I never have to use anything else^^
In a way I love that this comment is greyed out. It's the only one that has merit. Think of it: how often do you see articles of this kind on HN, that could be written in the thousands easily, all of which you could call "amusing" or "interesting" with just as much merit? For me personally the answer is "not that I can remember", so yeah, it's kind of obvious.

HN, do you want to be a meeting point for minds, or a marketing tentacle connection node?
What?! Poor people can always be abused by driving up taxation. You don't need to tax their homes, you can just tax their food, water, electricity and fuel.

I see a much bigger problem in land ownership encouraging concentration of capital. We should be encouraging productivity, innovation, hard work, not rent-seeking.
iPhone 8 vs. iPhone X: Which One is the Best
Leading ML researchers issue statement of support for JMLR
The big problem with social networks is that their growth and traction are not strongly correlated with initial financial investment.

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp all famously started off on shoestring budgets. In contrast, large budgets and huge ambitions are probably toxic to building social networks. Google+ and post-acquisition MySpace are two good examples of this.

As a result, the best opportunity for disrupting Facebook is taking the billion dollars and starting a social media-focused venture capital firm. The firm's goal would be to make it easy and risk-free for college students to create mobile-first social experiences.

Hopefully, some of the seed investments will gain traction, and you should have enough of the initial billion dollars left over to provide significant follow-on capital. Ideally, your most promising Facebook competitors will not need to rely on advertising for several years.

After those several years, your top winners will probably be approached by Facebook's corporate development team... and they'll be offering to acquire your most promising portfolio companies. In order to avoid Facebook winning the final round, you'd have to use your influence over your portfolio companies to block any sale to Facebook. I'm not sure how practical this is because it would probably anger the founders, all their employees, and all other shareholders in the company.

Eventually... ten or fifteen years after your VC firm made its first investment... you might have a portfolio company that could stand up to Facebook.

Or you might not.

If this strategy was a sure bet, I'm sure that Google Ventures and CapitalG would already be halfway there.
I wonder why. I think they provide enough privacy for a workplace (as long as you're allowed to use headphones for extra sound blocking, and as long as the entry is to your side, not behind you) - the only way to get even more would be closed-door offices, but that takes much more floor space.

As for "collaboration", at this point I consider talking about it as a negative thing about a place. I mean, frankly, I know "collaborating" is fun and games, but at some point somebody has to sit down, focus, and write the fucking code.
Where are they gonna go, though? The whole Valley has succumbed to this fad.
Well to me it does seem, at least, as though the recent surge in public and private AI investments (Microsoft, Google, now Facebook) would have a positive local impact for AI researchers here. I mean with enough momentum it becomes self-sustaining with positive feedback loops: researchers have multiple local opportunities, so it makes sense to stay here in Montreal long-term, companies (even though they only need AI "as a component", as you say) have strong incentives to establish AI labs here, AI grad students have local job offers and don't get told they'd better leave for better career prospects, etc.

It's a bit early to conclude concerning the long-term "impact on the local economy" as you mention, but I guess it can't hurt to shine internationally in one more respect.

EDIT: I'd add also that there are quite a few AI-centered startups, where AI is the forefront and not just a component, e.g. look at this:

https://medium.com/@shivon/the-current-state-of-machine-inte...

and startups certainly contribute to the local economy. A local ecosystem around AI could foster such startups, I guess, so again not hurting.
Have you seen a chart of life expectancy over the last 1000 years?
Every popular project gets this kind of crap. The best response is to push back on these entitled fools.

I don't see how this is a better business model for Caddy than donations (which didn't work.) This is still basically a donation model, since they are not creating a separate closed-source edition. This is a way to automatically solicit for donations, making them look more like licenses.

Why is a new web server so important that there were going to be commercial users paying for it over established alternatives. When I saw that it was written in Go and replete with the latest buzzwords, I realized that this was written for ninjas. The intersection of ninjas plus commercial users may be too small for a business. (I hope I'm wrong for the author's sake)
> Anyone is free to charge for compiled binaries. If this compilation has added bonuses (e.g. including plugins) that gives people a reason to pay for that compilation. In any case, those that don't like it can just compile the project themselves.

Yep, anyone is free to charge whatever amount for whatever service/feature they offer. But apparently, in this case, the backlash against Caddy's move is greater than the willingness to pay for the service rendered (building binaries without the sponsor header).

Matt's post, and a lot of comments here on HN defending Matt, are missing the point: yes, there was vitriol, and yes, people reacted in a way that was disproportional to the announced changes, but in the end the most important take-away is that people are _not_ willing to pay for the product and are angry because of the changes and the way they were handled. This will cost Caddy a lot of business. Period.

In my opinion Matt should have done one of two things:

- Own up to his mistake (if he agrees it's a mistake)

- Stand by his choices, grow a pair, and laugh at the community for their silliness

What he did instead, is play the victim. He's not a victim. He tries to run a business. That alone will always alienate people. Deal with it!
It's not free Internet.
I'm a pretty basic got user, just wanted to say this was a really useful distinction for me to read.
Start with the Problem
I still recall getting a flight simulator i had ordered right before we went on a family holiday, and i brought the documentation with me.

Not only was the actual manual of the game thick and detailed, but the company had also produced a document of the history of the plane and how it was operated during its years in service. This complete with diagrams, pictures, and perhaps even anecdotes from surviving aircrews.

All this for a game that modeled the world in flat shaded triangles on an A500.
Opps you are right. So we need like 40% effeciency to make this work?
Dictators usually kill illegally, and protect themselves from the consequences with the sheer power they hold. Fascists kill and protect themselves through the idiotic/selfish mass' silent presence on their side.
It sounds like rebasing this way ensures branches will not overlap at merge time. This presumably pushes the "combination of changes" into the rebased-before-merging branch, which (if nothing else) makes sure that one committer owns the bug, not two.
In IEEE 2 * x == x + x, which follows from the basic premise that these operations are correct to the nearest float.
Explains why 'i won it on an ico' is such an appealing explanation of wealth to some bitcoin users...
Agreed. When I go from Ruby to Haskell I don’t try and eat hem to add Classes. That wouldn’t make sense. Why should JavaScript be different.
Montreal is already well known to be a hotbed for excellent machine learning talent.

Google already has their own Montreal AI lab, and they have also made a donation to the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA)[1].

I'm less familiar with the exact details of this, but Montreal might also be a nice place to relocate researchers that cannot get work authorization in the United States.

[1]: https://www.wired.com/2016/11/google-opens-montreal-ai-lab-s...
Previous discussion (with non-mangled title): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14943528
The Difference Between Existing Markets and New Markets
> ...and admit your brand new building isn't big enough?

How do companies believe in ever-lasting growth and then not reflect that in their plans on usage of space? Feels like cognitive dissonance to me.
Have you ever gone back to your (or someone else's) code from 6 months ago and needed to refresh your memory about what you tried and what didn't work, or why some of your test cases/data are what they are? Or why you commented out some test? It can be very helpful, I think this history is often important. And you won't know if a given bit of code history is important until you need it.
Like all these machine learning generation things, it provides a plausible model, but not necessarily the correct model.
This. I so strongly wish companies would start including their office arrangement in the job description. It would make it easier for me to avoid open-plan places, and it would let those who like them avoid offices/cubicles - thus making it more likely employees will feel good and thus work at peak productivity. It would also let the industry gather some real feedback about people's preferences. I don't really see a downside of including that info.
I doubt rapists put on condoms.
An existing market is a market where customers already spend money buying more or less the same product or service that a given company is selling. That product or service may be delivered or sold in a different way, but at the end of the day, the customer that you’re targeting is already spending money on substantially the same thing...

A new market is a market where the end product or service is new – in other words there isn’t really existing demand, but there could be...

When investors and entrepreneurs go after a truly new market – the advantage is usually there are not entrenched competitors so if the market materializes as quickly and dramatically as they hope, market leadership is more attainable. In addition, new markets can grow exceptionally quickly, far faster than existing markets – and a rising tide can lift all boats as the saying goes. So, there is no doubt that you can win and win big in a new market. That being said, the risk one takes with a new market actually emerging is often profoundly underestimated. My guess is the most common reason companies targeting new markets fail is primarily because the market never really emerges at the pace and size that the company and investors expected. You can have great management, a great product, excellent sales and marketing, but if the market isn’t there, then it’s easy for a company to get stuck. It’s hard to have good product/market fit, when there’s no market after all...
Cuba mystery grows: New details on what befell US diplomats
Confirmation bias aside, I've actually had people who neevr respond to email, don't use any standalone messengers, only read their private facebook messages weeks later... but are indeed replying to status posts and comments. So yes, you either stop communicating or adapt.

And no, phone calls are not an option. These are people I've never talked to on the phone in my whole life, why would I start now?
Wait until it's been out in the wild for a while. I've heard that Apple employees say going back to an old device after using one with Face ID feels weird... because Face ID is just so seamless, you never have to think about it, it basically just feels like your phone is always unlocked.
I wonder how many times i have sworn at someone slapping up a 30 minute video of their mug talking when the same information could have been delivered in a few lines of text. All because they want those tiny tiny Youtube ad impressions.

This is why well received books rarely translate well into movies btw (at least if you try for one book, one movie).