skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> a messaging app I've never heard of. Despite it having 200 million users. Apparently.

Yeah it's tough for me to keep track of which apps are/aren't significant because I'm not in the loop with every community out there.

I'm guessing the users are distributed among small pockets in a network of people who all know each other -- like how in the 1990s there were pockets of "MSN Messenger" and pockets of "Yahoo Instant Messenger" and pockets of "AOL Instant Messenger" users randomly scattered around various schools. OR like how Orkut grew so precipitously in Brazil.

Or it's a generational thing -- I think there is a certain age group of people in the US who used Yik Yak, another who uses tbh and co, and so on.

I would generally trust Facebook employees to tell me which apps are "real"
/ growing since they have Onavo surveillance and other sources (https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-onavo-gives-social-me...). But aside from those data, I'm not sure how else to keep track of which apps are "real" / big.
Especially when the first line is a mangled version of Bayes Formula -- the p(y) and p(x) are in the wrong places!
I know you can use JFrog/Artifactory to cache pulls of Jar files from maven repos, as well as Docker images. Does JFrog support node?
>How do you think this does not illustrate that?

Your evidence for this is solely a statement from the "accused". I'm not saying that they're lying, but that it is in their best interest to say the exact same thing no matter what the truth is. In other words, without any additional context, a person saying "this negative thing is a lie" is exactly what you'd expect them to say, whether or not it was actually a lie.

So no, if the only evidence for the employer not "looking into both sides and the evidence" is that the person who got fired claimed that, I don't find that alone at all a reliable claim in the absence of any corroboration.
What prevents capability based security models from widespread adoption? Is it again the fault of UNIX being “not bad enough”?
State machines are wonderful for testing as well. Any time you have a bug, just record the events that got you into the buggy state, and replay it in a test.
There aren't any. Yarn is a better package manager than the npm client, but the problem is in the npm registry, and that's the same for both yarn and npm..
The term "core Python developer" seems to have a very specific meaning: someone who works on the implementation of the Python language itself, and has commit privileges for that project. For example:

https://devguide.python.org/coredev
The idea that there is some One True Path to becoming an Artist (as if either path or role were a consequence of universal natural law) is myth-making at its most obtuse.

Even a cursory glance at art history will show the heroic myth is anything but universal. There are tortured artists yet others who are at the peak of mental health. There are poor artists, rich ones, uncompromising artists, artists who'll sell their soul for a drink or a fuck, artists who beat their partners, those who die young, or live to a ripe old age; organised artists, yet others who can barely find their studio.

A shorthand: there's no such thing as 'an artist' (let alone a 'real artist').
At the same time, "New US homes today are 1,000 square feet larger than in 1973 and living space per person has nearly doubled:"
http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...
The Meltdown bug and the KPTI patch: How does it impact ML performance?
Its been 1.5yrs since, I had uninstalled FB app from my phone due to battery usage and havent used it since. Most of my friends are on WhatsApp and we have groups for each occasion like roadtrips/ bdays etc. I follow few on my friends on Instagram, which I occasionally see before making my next travel plans. Its feels more appropriate to share in the right context, unlike FB which feels like a public restroom.
Definitely not solved. I wouldn't even say search is a well defined problem.

In any case, PageRank is a method for estimating quality of a page based on the amount of inbound links, not a solution to all of search.

But it's a property of the web at the time, not something universal to the search problem, e.g. it's not a statistic that exists if you want to search books.

I think the work being done on question answering (given a question and a document that answers the question, provide a concise answer) is a place where a lot of interesting work is being done, both in academia and at Google with the snippets of web pages it provides.
This is such a simple solution I fear one day Facebook may no longer allow it.

I unfollowed everyone years ago and it has made a huge difference in how I think of Facebook. Without the persistent feed and flood of ads, it’s just another tool for communicating with people, one that is seldom used when faced with other alternatives. Facebook is now mostly harmless, and I only spend maybe a minute or two on it every few days.
Idiotic behavior like keeping bugzilla secret (sadly again adopted in Vivaldi due to same people in charge) didnt help either. They didnt even try all that hard before giving up. Opera had an option of open sourcing Presto.
Also, computers and monitors have vastly different life cycles; the former become obsolete much faster than the latter. Binding them together physically forces you to replace one or the other either too soon or too late for absolutely no benefit.
> I am curious to know what major innovations in search engines happened since the page rank algorithm, or were there only incremental improvements?

a ton has happened! since pagerank, theres been a ton of advances around nlp that has changed the way queries are processed prior to information retrieval. for example, google's rankbrain seems to do a lot of the heavylifting around word similarity.
> Software is fault tolerant. Small memory failures can be trivially tolerated.

Most software is not at all fault tolerant in this respect. It just crashes. Fortunately, most users are somewhat fault-tolerant.
This isn't really surprising, nor is it new. Remember the days when one needed to know how OS's really worked to write code? Or when code was in assembly? All of today's code does compile down to that, but I'm willing to bet a large majority of programmers can't grok assembly (nor do they need to).

Historically, we've seen the more tedious jobs get automated away to create better jobs that require more "human" skills. This is a good thing.
I had the same reaction, but now I'm starting to suspect it actually is safe, for a reason that's not immediately obvious.

Consider the unoptimized version. It's possible that after you release the lock, another thread will take it. But I'm pretty confident there is no guarantee of this, and your own thread might immediately take the lock back. (Probably often, especially if there's just one CPU.) If taking the lock back immediately causes a deadlock, then your code is already broken as written.

So you already must account for the possibility that nothing changes between the time you release the lock and take it again. All the optimization does is take away the _other_ possibility, which was something you couldn't rely on anyway.
Q# – A Quantum Programming Language by Microsoft
I had never heard this term until I read this article, but have often thought of a very similar feeling in the past. Maybe it's the same?

The problem is, what I'm thinking of with myself is something that I was not consciously aware of at the time, but that definitely occurred. So I can't relate to the idea of "I will probably fall in love with this person." Rather, it's there's this reaction I have, that's probably some initial attraction, or picking up on subtle cues of their attraction, or mutual attraction, that I'm not aware of at the time.

Generally speaking, I feel like I want to impress this person a lot, and feel kind of inferior or insufficient or something, like I want them to like me. It's not a manipulative feeling, like I want to manipulate them, but rather a genuine feeling of wanting to be a better person, or more attractive, in response to them. It's almost as if my brain is trying to be sexually and romantically attractive to a person I don't even know I'm attracted to.

However, in these situations, I would never really think anything about being attracted to them. If someone brought it up with me, I might even think it's absurd, and not even in a defensive way, but just in the sense that it never ever occurred to me to be in a relationship with them. I don't think to myself "oh that person is really attractive," or "they're the sort of person I'd like to be with." It's something I'm really unaware of, sometimes even for months of knowing the person. It's a very visceral, primal kind of thing.

This article seems to be describing a very similar idea, but at a later stage, where I might be becoming aware of feelings but am not entirely sure of the consequences of it or something.
Why does a spam system delete packages that have already been in use for quite some time? I could understand if it blocked some newly updated ones, but it seems like it has deleted already existing packages that also were used by other packages?
It is really another embarrasment for NPM, considering that this is not the first time something similar happens (see: left-pad issue, 23 march 2016)

So they learnt zero from it.

Then, WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO SIGN THOSE PACKAGES? Zero, nothing. They didn't learn from mistakes, they don't listen. NPM is still open to all sorts of malicious use.

Besides NPM problems, yesterday many packages won't work because package "pinkie-promise" wasn't available. This is the full effective source code of pinkie-promise:

module.exports = typeof Promise === 'function' ? Promise : require('pinkie');

Not just a NPM fault, but a fault of the js community as a whole for accepting systems made from hundreds of one-line packages, a sort of spaghetti code for the modern era.
A big problem with the current incarnation of democracy is that there is no accountability over time of the various goals that officials claim to pursue.

If someone running for office says that they will make sure the local firehouse gets an X% increase in budget and that unemployment in the district will go down by Y%, there should be an unambiguous way of tracking, over time, how they are doing on their promises.

This "goal verification" seems like an important first step if one wishes to introduce meaningful computational processes in Washington. Ideally, over time, we would have a system against which we can run such promises: "The ministry of health says increasing the budget of X will lead to outcome Y, and our model agrees with this decision with a confidence of 90%".

Eventually, this system might even build excellent models of what happens in various parts of society when various parameters are modified. It could predict where new schools need to be opened based on the natality data provided by hospitals and local employment rates, what the plausible long ranging effects of lowering or raising corporate tax by x% would be, whether the opening of a certain factory requires increasing the budget of the firehouse in the neighboring district because the district is now over a certain threshold for fire risks, and so on.
Microsoft/Quantum - SDK for Quantum Computing
What exactly is wrong?
I'm not convinced.

> A new machine is in warranty.

Warranties are for individuals. Businesses will use them if they exist, but when a machine fails you replace it with a spare off the shelf. All a warranty does is save you the cost of buying another spare, which amortized over a fleet is nowhere near the cost of buying all new equipment.

> You don't need to keep track of what machines you have, how many memory slots they have, what DDR version and speed they require, etc. You don't need personnel to do the replacements.

There is inventory software to automate this. And upgrading a machine requires much less work than replacing it because an upgrade doesn't normally require transferring programs, settings and user data.

> In large organizations, hardware is only a small cost compared to salary, etc. So, it is typically not a problem to replace machines every 2-3 years, if necessary.

That other costs are larger is no excuse to waste money. An upgrade will often make a 2-3 year old machine equivalent to this year's machine, which is typically less expensive than replacing the entire machine. Especially since you don't have to replace any component that isn't actually a bottleneck in your applications.

But the main value of upgradability to large companies is as a hedge against unexpected requirements. Some vendor's new software requires twice the resources as the old version two months after you've bought equipment using the old spec. Either you can upgrade the machines or you have to replace them. Even if you don't always have to do it, you always want to be able to.
I'm not a javascript dev, but isn't NPM volunteer run? It seems odd to be shaming people who do something for you as a volunteer free service.
That would break when going cross platform for modules with native deps.
The question no longer seems to be whether it can and does help, but more about asking when we stop punishing the other groups of people (the groups AA biases against). Ideally we all want an equal playing field. But the field will never be equal so long as we continue to measure it based on the outcome of the game.....
No. This is undesirable for people looking to break the habit of joining platforms to go to events.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" -- George Santayana

Now, it is easy enough to lob an aphorism but an event like this means that lessons previously learnt have been ignored (for whatever reason).

If you are going to build something that replicates or advances on previous systems the least you can do is study those systems to see what they did right and what they did wrong. In my opinion the Javascript ecosystem has produced some wonderful new systems that do things that have never been done before but in doing so they have wilfully ignored the past and didn't learn some basic lessons. In doing so they muddy the waters and in the end bring down the reputation of the whole ecosystem. I guess then it is not a huge surprise that a sizeable number of people feel that an unusually large number, as a percentage, of Javascript projects come and go and keep reinventing the wheel.
> the computer is a tax write-off anyway—something individuals buying for themselves often forget.

While this is true, the people who are unaware about what tax admitted expenses are, often just assume that it is "free money". It is not. You still have to earn whatever you spend on the machine, and it is up to you to consider, what is and isn't cost effective for your specific situation.

And not only that; in many jurisdictions, there are limits in what can be considered OPEX. If you go above that, your spending has to be accounted for as CAPEX and you have to depreciate the item. Depreciating a computer for several years, instead of expensing it in the current year, can quickly decrease its appeal.
> We don’t discuss all of our security processes and technologies in specific detail for what should be obvious reasons, but here is a high-level overview.

Isn't that the opposite of good practice? You shouldn't rely on obscurity. It's better to have the security processes out in the open so that it can be audited and flaws pointed out.
Unicode Security Considerations
Python 3 has been out since December 2008, so 9 years.

It's easy to forget that Python 2 was supposed to have been deprecated in 2015, but that got pushed back until 2020. Personally, I don't feel like backporting security fixes forever.
This is a great question.

One possible answer: maybe the right system would use "ambient authority" (ACLs, etc) for the common case, but scale up to true capabilities for interesting corner cases.

Creating capability UIs that compete, in the common case, with the normal ambient-authority design, is ferociously hard. This seems to be where most capability systems falter. The hardest UI problem in the leading modern capability OS, Sandstorm, is certainly the capability "powerbox."

Think about all the places you can type a filename or a URL. If the designator and the authorization have to travel together, and the pair is an unforgeable capability, then user-entered designators (like paths or URLs) are not practical. Designators can't travel through unsecured paths, through the human mind, etc. This is a painful limitation.

That said, the OP is the best explanation of capabilities I've ever seen. Everyone really should read it.
Location: Poland

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Python, Django, C#, Kotlin, Bash, AngularJS, PostgreSQL, Redis, Cassandra, MongoDB, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Machine Learning

Résumé/CV: http://michallech.info/static/Michal-Lech-Resume.pdf

Email: michal [AT] michallech.info

Website: http://michallech.info

==============================

I am Full Stack Developer with 8+ years of commercial experience. My selling point is ability to prototype and execute rapidly due to extensive list of technologies I know and industries I've worked in.
I am open to consulting opportunities as well as long-term projects or employment in the areas of software architecture, tech leadership, backend, frontend development, data analysis, machine learning. The ideal position would leverage my extensive experience, software architecture knowledge, detail oriented approach and ability to execute fast.

I prefer remote/semi remote opportunities but I am willing to relocate for selected projects.
> This reads to me like a fairly simple unintended consequence of what seemed like a good approach.

Yes, but you need to keep in mind:

1. This stuff is hideously important because getting it wrong is a incredibly serious security hole. Letting people publish a package with a name that other people are already requiring is a defcon 1 emergency.

2. They already had a major issue with this and said they had fixed it. You get, at most, one time when you can say "whups, we didn't realise how big an issue this was!".

3. It's their job to get it right. This is, literally, npm inc. It's not some hobbyists, or a service being provided by people in their spare time.

So when you say:

> The automated spam filter kills dodgy uploads, as these mostly happen on previously unused names a decision is made to not have the spam packages’ name remain taken.

I have to disagree. They needed to check how many times the flagged package had been downloaded, and after the left-pad debacle, they knew (or should have known) that.

They're not taking this seriously.
I honestly think it was a conscious decision. The problem with most wireless mice I see in our office is they end up being left constantly plugged in and are essentially wired mice. By placing the charge port on the bottom they are actively prohibiting you from using it as wired mouse.
NPM shouldn't scare you. Simple fact is you should not be relying on ANY package registry at the time of deployment.
A breach didn't cause the issue, but there absolutely was a breach in response to NPM's incompetence. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16087126
California Introduces Its Own Bill to Protect Net Neutrality
The first OS I've used that includes Python3 in the base install is Debian 8(Jessie) and I no longer use Debian in production. CentOS 7 does not include Python3 in the base install. You can install it, sure, but why bother when you can just use the python that is already there? Or better yet, /bin/bash...

Again, in the context of this discussion, the whole argument is yet another point in shell's favor. There's no major backwards-incompatible change in the language. With Bash, you just decide whether POSIX compliance is something you need, and that's basically it. Both versions are still supported and no one interrupts discussions to announce that beatings will continue until morale improves whenever the deprecated version of Python comes up.
>I can't keep pointing to the same quotes showing how you interpret what I say

Pointing to quotes cannot do this. You need to explain how what I'm saying is a mischaracterization. To be clear, your suggestion is

> hiring competent minorities into teams, where although they are a minority in general they will not be on their team.

My claim is that is that

(1). This means hire minorities solely into majority-minority teams.

(2). Hiring minorities solely into majority-minority teams is a form of segregation.

Just restating your original suggestion does not address either of these claims, you need to do something to show that (1) or (2) is false. I believe the reason that you have not done this, and have instead resorted to restating your original claims is because you are unable to reject either of these claims. Instead you are attempting to obfuscate this fact.

I'm familiar with the research about the harms of being a minority and the impact it can have on performance, but as far as my claims about segregation go, those arguments are irrelevant. And that's why I previously said that they were a distraction. If you want to show how my interpretation of your claims is false, you need to show that either claim (1) or (2) is false, and so far you have not done that, you've simply restated your thesis.
> but that's no reason for NPM to have dangerous policies.

Oversight != 'dangerous policies'. Seems like they thought they had this fixed.
It's a company: https://www.npmjs.com/about
There is truth to that of course. At the same time it is about percentages. The more "opportunities" you have to do something the more likely it is that you do. If your friends are doing it, you have role models you can identify with, you don't have to give up something that is expected of you etc. all add up. A lot of boys in e.g. the 90s got in to programming because quake was awesome and/or they wanted to be a hacker like Linus.

> [...] otherwise I think hacker culture is pretty ungendered in the interactions of its members.

I think a large part of the culture can be very macho, even stereotypically so, and that arguing over programming and something like martial arts can be very similar. But it depends on where you look of course.
Slightly less: the iMac Pro uses the ~$100 AQC107 whereas the X99 motherboard chosen uses the more expensive X550AT2 because Aquantia only launched their chips this year.

But yeah, the Xeon they chose is quite a bit slower than the 8-core Xeon-W; the Broadwell equivalent was really the $1100 E5-1660 v4.

So -$200 for motherboard, +$700 for CPU, and -$100 for PSU if you're feeling generous. That's still $5k.
It's not surprising since the NPM CEO is a notorious "social justice warrior" who doesnt want white people to apply to talk at conferences: https://twitter.com/izs/status/911105515798720513

Its not hard to see why this preoccupation with regressive ideas leads to problems actually running the company and building a product. The downvotes will speak for themselves here though...
ah yes, you are correct. it isn't a binary
Does the N.F.L. Have a Usain Bolt?
Yep, that's the one I was going to say :-)

"It goes really deep" is, unfortunately, a relative description. Half-way through my undergraduate studies, I had pretty much outgrown it and needed more specialized books.

Nonetheless, it is a superb entry-level college textbook that covers the entire breadth of modern biology. The text is very understandable and gives more background information than is needed for a typical introductory lecture to any given topic (while still emphasizing the salient points so you don't get confused). Apart from the above-mentionend interviews, it also includes sections on current methods in biology, which are pretty handy when you're new to the field. Plus, the illustrations are simply excellent: pretty to look at and a huge help for understanding. On the whole, I find it to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing textbooks I know. (Beaten only by Futuyma's "Evolution".)

My best investment in university so far!