skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What is wrong with airplanes?

High speed rail makes sense on the coasts. Making a train from New York City to Boston is a good idea (guess what, we have one, and it is the only Amtrak route that is profitable). However a high speed train from New York to LA would be a trip far too long for people to willingly take.

The point is don't try to make a solution fit all needs. Rail in the US is the best in the world in large part because it doesn't deal with humans. This allows efficiency that you can't get when dealing with people. (people don't like sitting in a siding for an hour waiting for an oncoming trail so you have to build more track...)
Things You Didn't Know About Apple Siri
Putting a price on Bitcoin
> a 100% sane assessment of his situation. Nothing could be a more accurate picture of most of our working lives than the OP's post

To be fair, it is extremely hard to tell, even for me (OP). Sometimes I feel like I'm nuts because everyone else seems to get by and just deal with it. Am I so special or fragile that I can't just suck it up and do like everyone else?

No matter what angle I look at it though, I don't see how this could not make anyone at least a little bit sick. Spending 40 years (or 10 years if you're aiming for FI) using your life and health away to make some stranger even richer while the best you can hope for is keeping your job. It's absurd, and I can't understand how a lifetime of taking one for the team doesn't make people revolt.

But maybe we're the crazy ones because we're the minority, and can't adapt. I honestly don't know and struggle with this question.
Sadly we'll be replaced 2 years too late. :(
University of London:
https://london.ac.uk/courses/computing-and-information-syste...

It's the cheapest I've seen - less than $10K total for the degree.
I think one is more efficient memory wise but I'm not sure which one.
- See https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html — just send a letter to his Stanford address.

- You may have misinterpreted the talk. There's already a proof (even for the closed form of the leading coefficient), by someone (I have the name written down somewhere but it's in the video). You might enjoy submitting a solution to the AMM problem instead (which only asks for the rate of growth, but if you have a fuller proof I'm sure that's good).
There's always a reason ;)

Being a self-hosted product we have to make tradeoffs for the thousands of people operating (scaling, upgrading, configuring, troubleshooting...) instances. In short, we try to keep the system architecture fairly simple using available technology and keeping the broad skillsets of admins in mind.

It was a somewhat difficult call to add ElasticSearch for it's broad search capability, but being used for other purposes helped justify it. Adding Hound or similar services that were considered would have added more to administrative complexity and wouldn't provide for a broader range of search needs.

We continue to iterate on search, making it better over time.
Ask HN: How do you stay focused while programming/working?
I often find myself "needing" to take a mini-break after just a few minutes of concerted effort while coding. In particular, this often occurs after I've made a tiny breakthrough, prompting me to reward myself by checking Twitter or HN. This bad habit quickly derails any momentum. What are some tips to increase focus stamina and avoid distraction?
> its just infeasible to do stuff yourself on a shoestring budget, without hiring professionals.

Millions of new businesses are started every year in the US on a shoestring and without hiring professionals.
Over time the Internet in the United States will become less amenable to innovation. There are other countries in the world, some of which will stick to their guns and keep their net neutrality laws (or their line sharing requirements, which create the competitive pressures needed to accomplish the same thing). Startups will fare better in those other countries.

Among other things this is an issue of competitiveness for the United States.
Yes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebAssembly#Development
Monitoring the health of Microservices running on gRPC
I like the idea of having full text search, though I wonder how it behaves on large libraries... Calibre is great for managing a library, but not so much at searching through a large amount of books....
Those things are choices made by ARM device vendors. There are tons of open devices like the Raspberry Pi that use ARM processors, and x64 devices can be locked down just as effectively using TPM and system management controller features and secure boot.
Do any of those build this style of mock? I looked around a while back and didn't come across one.

edit: I looked again and found https://github.com/matryer/moq which seems similar
At that point then, I imagine absolutely everything will have already been automated. Lawyers would certainly no longer be needed, nor would much of the judicial system. Music would be automated, hell maybe even animated movies. We might have celebrity neural nets that produce the best music/paintings/memes.

I definitely agree that coding will look different after AI has permeated most of our information systems, but fully automated coding by 2040? Really? I honestly only see mundane boilerplate type of coding tasks being automated -- though arguably that is probably what a large majority of software developers are currently doing.
While I love sci-fi as much as the average HN user, this is not going to happen. At least unless you are fortunate enough to be part of the .01% that will be in control of the resources by that time.

This is First World narcissism. We can't figure out how to feed everyone, but one day, when we finally make it, we can all blob around and livestream our lives while the robots take care of the drudgery. Hell, maybe someone on HN right now is working on Twitch for human behavior right now. The future's so bright I gotta wear shades.
Before that happens the area's of code review and auditing would be most likely to happen as without that, we will just have AI that can produce buggy code much faster than before.

After all, if AI could code like a human, even the best of us make mistakes and without that avenue of teaching them to be better, by auditing and reviewing existing code, we will only create more problems than we solve.

For many others, intelligent compiler reports would be their first wish.
Low power mode is something different, and iOS has that too.

The problem here isn't that iOS isn't just trying to conserve power to last a bit longer. At some point the battery physically can't deliver the current required to run the CPU at max speed.

At that point, the phone battery settings screen says something like "Battery Service Required".

For some reason a lot of people get annoyed when their phone needs service. It's understandable, but I really don't see what Apple should do about it.

When a car's battery needs to be replaced, people don't go complaining how their car is suffering from planned obsolescence, they just replace the battery.
"It's not perfect, so burn it down" has very rarely been a wise decision in the light of history.
I didn't think you were criticizing, I just find the source material and the homogeneity of their promises interesting.
Pinterest Sees the Future
I find it easier to just blanket ban foods. Works better for my personality type.

French fries are on my never ever touch list, along with soda and a few more items.
Or MacPorts.
Whenever I see the term "web developers" in this context, I'm assuming it means all of the decisions they make given the requirements and inputs from others in the business.

I think the web is currently terrible and I think modern web-development is to blame, but that includes the people behind the web-devs making the decisions that are being pushed onto the web-devs.

There are a lot of things to blame for the current state of the web, but ultimately the current practice of web-development (and whatever behind-the-scenes processes that involves) is clearly the biggest reason why.
Nah, it differs between the Bluetooth device profiles, and even wildly within each profile.

Audio headsets are particularly weak - Ostensibly using a '128 bit' cypher in many instances which turns out to be the c0 stream cypher, proven to be weak and effectively only 56 bit.

The situation is exacerbated by how little product manufacturers have to say on the subject.
(removed explanation because it seems not appreciated)
UIUC also has something:

https://engineering.illinois.edu/online/masters-degrees/mcs....
Amazing point. Another bad thing is that the books I come across on Amazon simply don't...idk scratch the itch.
Hogwash.
Extracting value from your logs with Stackdriver logs-based metrics
I don't know about homebrew, but Nix does (not binaries, though).

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs
Revenue Is Product Management [audio]
Weary of the Internet, I went back to mail
I might actually have an idea of what the article was talking about, but after reading 5 paragraphs about the road and lawn I just kind of gave up.
We use Sql Pro for Postgres. It's been great. https://macpostgresclient.com/
Indeed. "Software developer" > "coder", and the difference will only become more stark as machines become more advanced, giving the developers more powerful tools.

The key ability of a good developer is finding out and understanding what needs to be done, the translation form the language of business to the language of technology. Technology has moved from low-level register juggling of 1950s to modern high-level, more and more declarative languages and frameworks. But the need to be able to map the informal requirements of business to it did not go away, and likely will not for quite some time.
I understand you'd have to lay new track when you wanted to add HSR. The point is you have an existing network people can use to get to your HSR endpoints.
Genuine question regarding a masters programs instead of a BS:

I've already got an undergrad degree, but it's not related to the computer science field at all. I have taken a few CS classes and know the very basics of coding (loops, conditionals, using functions, etc). Despite that, I'm assuming I should go for the BS instead of the masters since there's still quite a bit of CS knowledge I'm lacking (most algorithms, working with APIs, proficiency in Linux, etc).*

Thoughts? CS BS first, or go straight for the Masters?

*Those might not be the best examples, but I don't know what I don't know... I'm just assuming those are a few things I'd learn in BS curriculum that I'm not very good at now.
This is the first time I've seen disassembled WASM. It's actually quite readable!
Nope. It's just hazing. The geek version of fraternity pledge week.

The only standardization is the thud of hitting the floor due to all participants expending the least possible effort. Like a team building trust fall where everyone is too busy checking Messenger to be bothered to extend their arms.

The shared failure of institutionalized apathy.
This only happens if you're pulling more energy than the long-term capacity (i.e. heat flow from the interior of the Earth) of the site. If you end up doing this, you can just draw less power until the temperature rises back up.
The paper's abstract contradicts the article title. The paper argues that AI will "allow humans to cope with the difficulty of programming different devices efficiently and easily." This is much more believable than the assertion that coders will be replaced.
Aiming for FI only means that you'll eat the same shit but for much less time (i.e. 10 years vs 40+ years)
This post evaluates ideas from the perspective of the person who's doing it, rather than from the customer. This post is not about building a successful business, rather it is about finding out what "you" want to do. These are often, two different things.
Because saying it was built with go says "single binary, no dependencies" and more. It also says that it was built in go for any developers who want to contribute.
Like these three? ;-P
Columbia University has a distance learning option called CVN. They offer an MS in CS. The degree/diploma is identical to getting a Master's on campus.
"It's ok if it's true as I figure Professor of AI will be the last job title standing" (Patrick Henry Winston, MIT AI & The Future of Work Conference 2nd Nov 2017)
Wow. Four whole years. That’s amazing and obviously disabuses anyone of any notion of conflict of interest. Yep. This puts the issue to bed forever thanks for clearing it up.
Q# code is run on a quantum virtual machine; which is a program that simulates a quantum computer on a classical computer.

Quantum computers can be simulated by classical computers up to a certain point. Like that article says, a 30 qubit quantum computer can be simulated on a laptop. Microsoft is simulating up to 40 qubits on Azure. Simulating around 50 qubits or so would need one of the world's most powerful supercomputer.
I'm a bit shocked that they're paying $600M. Is Shazam even profitable? It feels like a clever tech demo from 10 years ago that's already been replicated in search engines like Google.
Inside the Boeing Dreamliner factory
> Although material (e.g. books, online videos) are available (and free)
Could you post the links to these please?
If this were designed to seamlessly interoperate with Calibre (a filesystem and sqlite3 iirc) this would be potentially useful to me.

I could more confidently selfhost a web version of my calibre library for reading and bookmarking. Calibre has a web version but I'm not confident in it and would be uninclined to host it even in a sandstorm instance for example.

The memory issues of libreread, as indicated by others, are too much for hosting in a friendly way with other apps. The value of full text search isn't nearly good enough to warrant the memory usage. Aim for < 60MB serverside.

Calibre has an large amount of features that are critical for people actually trying to maintain an ebook library. Those features have been added and polished over a decade. I'm very doubtful they can be replicated in a reasonable timeframe.

Valuable to see people making things in this area though! Cheers.
Most people like to compete to varying degrees. You see it in: video games, sports, science, business, relationships, driving, lifestyle choices, and so on.

As nations are made up of people, nations also like to compete with other nations. It's not even remotely unique to the US. You've seen it persistently across eg Europe for the last thousand years, from small to large nations.
Game :clap: devs :clap: do :clap: not :clap: write :clap: games :clap: for :clap: the :clap: web.

I do not know where HN got the idea that game developers are even remotely interested in gamedev on the web, but a majority of us aren't even in the slightest.

Cross-platform compilation on Unity and Unreal is neat, WebGL is nice for awwwards.com, and yeah, "b-but Little Workshop!"

WebGL came too late and doesn't really serve anyone, except fucking with browser implementors and giving them more grunt work to do to comply with specs created by circlejerkers at Mozilla, because clearly it's more important to create a browser spec with Khronos et al. than making a good browser and making sure Google doesn't take away their marketshare since they're paying them to be their default search engine anyway.

Now people are on Steam. If the idea was to move the web progressively forward, drop Flash, and say to the next generation of teenage content creators, "Hey look at this C API we created JavaScript bindings for, easy to use, right?" then somewhere along the line, someone was creating shit that wouldn't be used and never thought about why people wouldn't use it for more than an eye-catching <canvas> embedded in a <header> and a blog post explaining how WebGL was used.

And what will WebAssembly be used for? I know Adobe will use it to create a web interface to some application no one uses, because it's important that they ship on obscure shit like Chromebooks because artists _definitely_ use those, right?
This "hire contractors" story is getting very familiar, ie Uber. Maybe we haven't had much innovation outside of writing the software and making the distribution chain. We need more roads and transit too.
MacPorts has been providing binary packages since 2.0, which was released in 2011. Many pre-compiled binaries are even available for old macOS versions back to 10.6. There are only a few ports where the license does not allow binary distribution.
In the current JS world of ever-increasing complexity, it's a breath of fresh air to see a useful and simple display of JS code. Thanks for sharing.
Frankly, airplanes suck. You spend endless time in security lines, get packed in like sardines during the flight, and have stringent restrictions on what kind of luggage you can take, how large it is, and how heavy.
Some of the best papers of past were only 2 or 3 pages. Certainly not this one though, that's not even a paper, that's just an extended online comment, letter to the editor, journal preface.
One word: skynet.
It's not going to stop everyone, but it will stop some of them. I've been on it for years, and I only get a handful of calls a year from telemarketers (which tend to be the unscrupulous caller-id spoofing kind).
Time to rediscover Perlis' doctrine and stock up on lollipops ?
Is photoshop harmful to the web? Should they give away their source code? Their source code is what's valuable in their company. So, art programs kind of need source protection. I won't be making a web-version until this is the case. If you can crack NW.js source protection, let me know http://docs.nwjs.io/en/latest/For%20Users/Advanced/Protect%2...
In a way, yes.

asm.js was a deliberately limited subset of JS syntax. By adding a "use asm;" statement, you signaled to the JS engine that everything after that was limited to the asm.js subset, allowing it to simplify the parsing logic and use a fast path for loading the code. You would rarely write asm.js syntax by hand, but rather use it as a compiler output format.

WebAssembly takes that further by defining a bytecode that the JS engine doesn't even have to parse, but can accept and work with more directly. This speeds up loading time. Also, loosely put, the way it's defined allows the JS engine to execute it faster.

WebAssembly is definitely not intended to be written by hand. Languages like C++ and Rust can now compile to WebAssembly, allowing non-JS source code to be run in a browser. (There _is_ a textual representation of the bytecode as well.)
In the USA, welfare spending dwarfs farm subsidies by a factor of >50. No doubt this is true elsewhere, too. Private ownership of agriculture is what ended hunger. Its effect has been shown quite convincingly in Massachusetts and China.
I talk to people today who think that mechanical design is basically trivial because we have CAD. All these tools do is help us do much more than we could before. But at some point humans get to decide what we want to use our tools for.

We’ll just have much more technological power in the future.
I love that we've come far enough that we need 1GB to process the most basic HTML/CSS.
My BA in psychology was fine. I don't think they care what your first degree is in, as long as you have one and it's not CS.
Nothing like a good headline! As to the subject, no, AI won't replace coders by 2040. I'll meet y'all back here then to say I told you so.
Uhh isn’t creating the “fingerprint” the non-straightforward part? Keep in mind you could start listening at any point in the song as well.
Some insight into the Shazam tech and article has a link to the algorithm being used.

https://www.toptal.com/algorithms/shazam-it-music-processing...
Involving the rich, IMHO, is a 'tragedy of the commons' issue - it's generally not worth for any one of them to get involved, since that doesn't provide a meaningful impact to the practical goals like "prevent the bad effects of inequality around me" or "reduce the risk of pitchfork-driven regime change"; but it could be worth for them to get involved iff there's a certainty that all of them would do so (willingly or not).

E.g. it is understandable for certain of the top billionaires to advocate that the top income rate and capital gains tax should be raised (e.g. https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/02/bill-gates-calls-for-higher-... or http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/warren-buffett-raise-taxes-we...), and strictly prefer that to simply giving away more of their income - since if you can get all the other rich to chip in, the impact is much larger.

It's not feasible to fund UBI by a few ultra-rich people voluntarily chipping in for it, but it is feasible to fund UBI by taxing them.
Gotcha. I always get excited when they do this but have to remind myself that Congress has to come up with the $. Here's hoping.
Converting digital audio to notes is both not as easy as it sounds and not how Shazam works.

https://www.toptal.com/algorithms/shazam-it-music-processing...
Ask HN: What can I do to acquire more freelancing projects/clients?
Hi HN,

I'm a game designer and programmer who recently started his own business. I was off to a rocky start but thanks to a blog post on gamasutra that ended up on HN I managed to reach my sales goal and I'm in the clear for the next 6 months. The problem is, I don't want to repeat the previous mistake and, although I have another game in the works and 2 more updates ready to ship for the first game, I'm looking to extend my savings and not have to bank on the next projects having the same luck.

I've setup an account on Upwork and have applied to more than 40 projects over the course of 1.5 months. I finally scored a quick 5$ job on translating a couple hundred phrases to another language. I have listed all the projects I worked on, quite a few of them being big titles (like The Dark Knight Rises, N.O.V.A 3, Frozen). I also listed the ones I developed myself as an indie and I have my credentials and LinkedIn listed as well.

I targeted projects related to my skills and experience with solid referrals and examples but I never seem to get the job. I lowered my hourly rate to 15$ / h and I still can't win any projects.

Any chance I can get some tips from people with more experience than me on freelancing? Or do you know any better place where I can find gigs related to programming (Lua, C#) or Game Development? Heck, I'd even take article writing since I like doing that and it would surely help me keep the lights on for longer.

Thanks!

Edit: I have been making games professionally since 2010 and even worked in fields related to Home Automation to save money for my own business.
This seems like the kind of bug that can cause a lot of harm (if a malicious actor wants to track someone's location) but not so much profit (no generic mass-account-stealing).

And that's a situation that the US legal system isn't well set up for.
I've done staff augs before, I hope to never do staff augs again. You are not respected, and have to absorb all the cost of poor decisions made before your time.
Yay! The repeal will bring Internet to it's (as FCC says) golden age times - the dialup times.
MacPorts user here. Uses case are the same, but:

- MacPorts does not track you by default with Google analytics.

- MacPorts lives by default in a self-contained directory tree.

- MacPorts tends to be more stable than Homebrew, but that’s just my personal experience.

- I didn’t like the slogans Homebrew used for years, implying MacPorts wasn’t good quality.
Maybe? What did you have in mind?
They have some exercises I would prefer to skip, so I'm not upset by the lack of grading. The bob exercise is extremely tedious.

I like the emphasis on sharing solutions.