skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not american, and I use public transport in Italy. But the public transport is simply ineffective a) from a door-to-door timing perspective and b) from a flexibility perspective.

Sure, I don't live in a big city, so maybe the public transport is not as effective as it could be; but many people I spoke with even in London (and other places like Berlin, Paris, Milan) seem to share the same suffering: constantly using public transport ONLY is annoying. Unless you plan your life now & forever (e.g. you buy an house on the right subway line to your job, and never change jobs) you'll find a moment when it's hard to do what you'd like to do. Want to go to the gym? Ouch, the last subway ride ends before you'd go out. Need to collect your kids before going home? No luck, their school is in a badly-served zone.

That's the issue with public transit.
So, working for an Uber clone that underpays its workers and exists to further enrich its billionaire shareholders is the most exciting thing this guy could find to do with his life? After already making millions off of his past career?

This is why people hate tech workers.
Apologies for the extreme nerd pedantry, but...

When he gets into the TG 747, he emerges in First, and then later makes his way to Business, rather than Business then First as he describes. Also the seats he's describing as leather-covered are fabric upholstered. I was on one of these a few days ago, as TG are still flying them, and with the hard product shown.
I am learning Python. It is widely used general purpose programming language. As cited on the most websites, it is great for data analysis, visualization, scientific research, web development, automation.

I have no prior experience of any coding language, but I am grasping it very easily.

It is very easy for non-programmers.
Game Oriented Assembly Lisp
That "not everyone has a retpoline compiler yet" was in the context of the Linux kernel, which so far compiles with GCC only (IIRC it also compiled with ICC in a distant past; and there's an effort to make it possible for LLVM/clang to compile the kernel, which is nearing completion). So in the context of this discussion, he's talking (and thinking) about GCC.
Delightful? More like excruciatingly long and boring.
The site works nicely with an adblocker or with NoScript
Hierarchies are necessary for complex systems to function. The way that it is used as a boogeyword by ideologues is exhausting.
I've never written a line of publicly accessible code in my life, I've been working for 20+ years and I rarely fail at getting an offer for a job I apply for. Then again, I don't submit resumes blindly. I always go through recruiters, that has more to do with my hit rate than my skill set.

Let me take that back. I got my first development job in college from another school about 100 miles away because he saw a HyperCard Eliza clone I wrote and posted on AOL back in 1993.
You don't get the point: if you create an empty space on the roads (whatever solution you invent), people will start occupying it immediately, and you face the same problem again.
It is still possible to get jaw problems with such a mouthguard though. As you still exert force on the mandibular joint, it may start to wear. The result is not very pleasant, to say the least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporomandibular_joint_dysfun...
Mass SMS service and its role in Marketing
Ask HN: Validate my idea
I've came up with an idea to make Quora but personal. Like answering & asking questions with people you know. I came up with this idea because my relatives & friends often asks me technology related problems and questions face-to-face, by chat or via call so why not make a platform which offers this service.

I would love to have your feedback & suggestion on this.

Thanks in advance!
Jams are caused by human drivers whose slow reaction time causes waves of slowdowns that build up into complete stoppage.

We can get AI reaction time down to the speed of light since all vehicles can communicate their speed, direction, and location simultaneously.

It is a totally new epoch of transportation and the old rules no longer apply.
I would say, the intrinsic property of gold is insignificant. Other metals which are naturally more abundant and in a usable shape would have more value, in other words, probably you would get more money by selling your monitor stand than a gold bar, if gold were to lose its scarcity.
Many people may not think they are qualified to be a manager.

However, it seems plausible to me that of the people who think they are qualified to be a manager, most are not.
My point was, depression can come from a variety of sources; not just environmental or biochemical. Saying it's generally those two sources glazes over all the others - and is not representative.
Elon Musk lines up $55bn payday – the world's biggest bonus
Frankly, this looks like something that was created by a company, not an artist.
Thanks for the reply, great to hear.

btw I just tried image search again after being scared off a while ago because it was buggy, and it's in a much better state than it was back then!

Love how you guys show you don't have to sell out to be able to thrive, and that caring for freedom shouldn't come at the cost of design or functionality (quite the opposite!)

<3
Can confirm. I'm running Arch Linux on my Hetzner VPS and it's been rock-solid (except that one time when I accidentally deleted /sbin/init, but that was my own stupidity).
I started "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" last week. I closed it after two or three pages because I couldn't stand the computer speak.
The problem is that spectulative execution is fundamental to performance in systems that have conditionals. With memory latencies being ~100ns, and a 3GHz core, you waste 300 cycles every time you need to load the conditional from RAM, and maybe 50 cycles if you need to load it from L3 cache. Branch prediction is generally pretty accurate, so avoiding that penalty is crucial if you want to go fast.

Now, maybe it is possible to reduce use of indirect branches . C++ for example, is pretty gratuitous in that respect. But in the end, most software is going to perform a lot slower without speculative execution. I don't think that's a price worth paying.

What will happen is the CPU vendors will fix meltdown (which should never have happened) and Spectre 2. Sharing the branch history buffer between contexts is something that fundamentally can be avoided, in the same way we can tag TLB entries with the PCID on recent hardware.

In the long run, the real issue is Spectre 1. Using software to contain untrusted software in the same address space is fundamentally hard with speculative execution. After all the fuss has died down, that's where we'll see innovative software techniques. It's already starting to happen, if you look at the webkit changes (scroll down to Branchless Security Checks):

https://webkit.org/blog/8048/what-spectre-and-meltdown-mean-...
This is a nice idea. People are often more reluctant to pay $500 as opposed to 0.045 BTC.
Distributed food production has long been a reality of the catering trade since the invention of the freezer. It's just that freezing food marginally reduces its quality. The question is, how much quality loss is there from making something in place A and then hot-delivering it to place B?
When FF 57 came out I was surprised at the new debugger, much better than the old one. But turns out it's still useless. I can't put a breakpoint in the middle of a WebGL game and expect it to work like in Chrome.

The last dev version is even more useless, the "break on exception" button is missing.
> "it's impossible to gauge how much goes to military spending"

It is easy to gauge how much goes to military spending. Practically all of it if we go by previous years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_aid_to_Israel.gif

And of that military spending, IIRC >=50% is only allowed to be spent on purchasing from US companies (i.e. driving US military innovation) and IIUC from 2019 onwards that percentage will go up to 100%, so it will primarily drive US military innovation (and at the same time discourage Israeli military innovation, since the Israeli government will be less likely to spend money on local military products)
Nobody I know of. Maybe that's how Kevin Costner did it at the time.

Now, more seriously, he's holding the mouse in a way it's easier to see it. When you use it normally, your hand obstructs the view from most directions and it'd require a close-up shot to show how it's actually operated. If I were directing, I'd go for that approach instead, with a cut to a close shot and back to the wider one, even if it did cost some screen time for the mouse itself.
I can imagine a world where instead of having a car you have a dedicated seat on your cul-de-sac's station-transit. Maybe set up in pods like a one-person version of compartments on 1930s trains.
Unfortunately I made a mistake not providing any details about the product in my first submissions, so I decided to detail it in the last one... Too bad the post didn't go through...

Should I try again after some time?
That article doesn't make a compelling case.

It suggests taking this code:

// square root of n with Newton-Raphson approximation
r = n / 2;
while ( abs( r - (n/r) ) > t ) {
r = 0.5 * ( r + (n/r) );
}

System.out.println( "r = " + r );

And refactoring it to this function:

private double SquareRootApproximation(n) {
r = n / 2;
while ( abs( r - (n/r) ) > t ) {
r = 0.5 * ( r + (n/r) );
}
return r;
}

System.out.println( "r = " + SquareRootApproximation(r) );

I'm all for this refactoring, but something was lost in the process. What kind of square root approximation is being used? Does the algorithm have a name? What would I search for if I wanted to read more about it? That information was in the original comment.
Ask HN: Need an objective opinion about my website. What can be optimized?
A startup from MinecraftEdu team raises $1.6M
Besides gamers, there is also an impact on those building ML/DL rigs, right?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16197520
Yes, that text really is an exercise in utter nonsense.

This device clearly isn’t aimed at somebody whose “gadget ecology” isn’t entirely Apple-branded (expressed another way, unless Apple already owns your ass because of switching costs), and if somebody can countenance opting for a Google Home Max (or anything else), then one is clearly not in this unhappy category.

I am left wondering, however, if anybody at Apple thinks this device is aimed at somebody: the desperation that seems to be transpiring through this copy to find it a purpose, an intended audience, a use-case, would seem to indicate otherwise. This is particularly telling as when it was announced I also thought to myself “oh, who gives a toss?”, followed by “ah, but this is Apple they must have done tons of market research and identified a target niche desperate to part with their well-earned cash, so even if I don't care about it, it's virtually guaranteed that somebody out there does”. Now I’m starting to wonder otherwise.

I am one of those happy slaves that toil within the walled garden of all things Apple: Macs, iPhones, iPads, and AppleTV. I have a couple of ancient iPod HiFi speakers hooked up to AirPort Express units so I can stream music over AirTunes and have been doing so for close to half a decade. My house is not ‘automated’ because the existing systems are those that were installed when it was built and I don't give a toss about home automation; that said, I've recently replaced the thermostat with a Nest unit (because it was given to me) and added on a couple of Nest devices beyond that too (security cameras, smoke alarm). I find myself both wishing Nest would add support for HomeKit but also entirely satisfied with the day-to-day experience of using the non-canonical Nest app to manage them, if and when I need to.

Like the author, I consider Siri (and most other vocal assistants that I’ve never used, but am just prejudiced against) to be garbage: unworkable, and a flawed user interface paradigm (I'm of the command line and late-nineties-style GUI persuasion). I don't use it on any of my devices except for getting the time when I'm in bed in the dark. I cannot imagine anybody would want to do anything with it.

I take one look at that mesh fabric cylinder and shudder at the thought of what my cats would do to it if they ever came within a parsec of it.

I just don't understand this thing. I don't want this thing. I'm starting to suspect I might not only be in the typical majority (even in the sub-population of Apple ecosystem captives), but that there might not exist a minority that does want it.
https://www.eliotandme.com/about
Please respect the context of a comment, and refrain from strawman arguments.

This was not about whether or not this feature is good for the Google repo (of course it is, nobody disputed that!). This was about whether and how to apply this to other projects.
I’m thinking a lot about this right now. Do you know of any successful company that did not adhere to giving conventional (i.e. very small) amounts of equity to employees?

I’m also wondering whether giving significantly more equity than usual to employees would deter potential investors, even if their own share of the cake remains the same (i.e. only by diluting the founders).
100% Free Internet Calls from Dubai to All Indian Numbers with Pinngle
i thought that was just my brain trying to escape from my ears.
This is typical for embedded software in cars, planes etc. Most of that C code will be generated though.
Interesting — I don’t think my copy had that.
Sudoku for Windows in BBC Basic
A couple of articles, that I found previously here on HN address this exact self-perpetuating downward spiral of mistrust.

https://hbr.org/1998/03/the-set-up-to-fail-syndrome

https://sites.insead.edu/facultyresearch/research/doc.cfm?di...

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8166701
I'm afraid that the reason to human suicide is simply, in most cases, to put an end to the pain these human feel.

The brain is an extreamly complex "organ" with many many different potential points of failure. Attempts to find a reason for abnormal behaviors by such type of guessing (finding an evolutionary reason) looks to me like our ancestors did when attributing to gods will unexpected natural events.

It's not impossible that depressive behavior is a natural brain protective measure (thinking of burnout here), but this reasonning really looks like guessing and as truth seeker, we shouldn't accept the risk to be wrong on this.
I can back this up. I'm British, my father and I were in the US and went to visit my uncle. We took the train out of Boston and decided to walk from the station to his house. Got stopped by the police and questioned. Amazing.
Ask HN: How do I MVP an e-book?
I work as an architect (of buildings) in Sweden, and for the last couple of years I've collected a large number of links to and information on manufacturers and providers of construction elements, furniture, kitchen cabinets, and many things related to the construction and refurbishment. I'm combining this with informative and illustrative texts on each category. It's all curated and surprisingly useful as finding high-quality manufacturers and providers is very time-consuming (and even as a professional you tend to forget names of products and manufacturers). The plan is to sell this as an e-book for ~$35 and turn the material into a nice side-project with some, though small revenue.

The question is: what is the best (and cheapest) way to MVP this? I appreciate all ideas!
Create a e-book mockup as a teaser? Create one sample chapter and give away for free (but how to market it?)

I have a (free) webpage running with the categorised links, but I've yet to write the texts.
I think you're not seeing the full potential of such a system. Public transportation for now is very useful but over large distances can involve many changes, waiting times and inefficiencies. We could have a swarm of driverless cars taking in all passenger requests and computing the optimal dispatching of driverless cars. For instance pick up passenger A and B, drive to place C and drop off B who gets has another driverless shuttle pick him up a minute later, pick up customer D and drive to E. Since all shuttles would be aware of each other's locations, they can take that into account into the schedule computation and avoid jamming streets.
> In fact, young people in general would have to get the same price as everyone else?

I really enjoy the fact that young people pay for car "insurance" more because of their increased risk at driving, but old people don't pay for health "insurance" more (if they pay at all) because of their increased risk at getting ill. Because one of those would be totally unfair while the other one is totally OK. You understand which one is which, right?

It is basically youth serfdom.
Isn't it the dark side of the moon, since spacecraft passing behind the moon go 'dark'; out of radio contact since the moon blocks radio signals?

On the other hand: it's the side of the moon that never receives earthshine. So it's dark in that sense.
Are You Interested in a Free Call to the UAE from the Internet?
It's neat, and rather funny.

To see an unmodified real-world C program run on a real-world hardware architecture, completely branchless, is pretty damn neat.

The way it takes hours to render a frame of DOOM is hilarious.

I wonder if the compiler will be optimised in future.
“A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well – this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociability as a whole.”
-- The Dispossessed
Bitcoin forks could welcome 50 more forks this year
Oohh, thanks for those, you've given me more things to go off and learn about!
Because it doesn't need encryption (packages' contents are public knowledge), while data integrity is protected by GPG digital signatures. That's why.
No, not like that. Trains work well for arterial routes that need to carry large volumes of people along predictable corridors at predictable times of day -- eg., for commuting. And yes America certainly needs to get better at investing in them.

But trains don't work at all well for serving smaller volumes of people moving in stochastic patterns at arbitrary times of day. Neither do buses. Cars serve this need very well -- they also generate massive negative externalities in the process, but they do serve this need.

Why should we care about "people moving in stochastic patterns at arbitrary times of day"? Transport planners call this "incidental travel," implying that it isn't really significant. But this is because transport planners don't have a good means of addressing it. In fact, incidental travel actually the majority of trips that people take: going shopping, visiting friends, going to the doctor's, eating out, etc. The balance is about 60/40 for incidental travel / commuting.

People own cars to serve this need, because nothing else will (unless you're in a mega-city that can afford to run high-frequency mass transport 24/7). Then, since car ownership is a sunk cost, people use their cars for commuting as well, where they're really sub-optimal.

Travel demand is an incredibly heterogeneous problem, which can only be addressed with a hierarchy of modes. That includes mass transport at fixed schedules, individual transport that is on-demand, and intermediate collective transport modes that currently doesn't really exist. Autonomous vehicles with 4-8 person capacities and demand-responsive routing would solve a broad class of transport problems that conventional public transport cannot -- and could do so without many of the negative externalities of private cars.

I've written much more on the subject, if you're interested: http://archive.podcar.org/blogs/nathan-koren/article/news/th...
Is turning up on time for your job a terrible metric?

To me being on time is just a very basic low level requirement of being a professional.

As the initial commenter said: trust goes both ways.
Turning up on time is a good way to show your manager that you can be trusted.

Edit: Actually, turning up on time may not make your manager trust you more, but turning up late will definitely make them trust you less.
Mary Lee Berners-Lee has died
"Getting into Lightning" won't make you money as you might think.

The network isn't a coin as such - merely a way of sending other kinds of coins. Hence it doesn't have a value which could skyrocket making one rich.

I worry that could hamper it's uptake.
I relied on Grab in MY and SG, both app and drivers were excellent, but if we needed a distilled example of how out of touch and tone-deaf tech can be then we need look no further than this article.
"or Airbnb"? what?
also keep leaving your desk when your mobile rings, and look furtive when taking the call
Far more than would be appropriate for a hacker news comment ;)

I will share that it is both more complex than many believe - and also less mysterious. "it's chemical" gets overplayed, while our relationship with our emotions is often left unexamined. There's a great deal of interconnectedness and sometimes cause & effect become confused or are tightly coupled. In the end, we're still learning, and everyone is different.
Data Science at the Command Line (2014) now available under CC BY-ND 4.0 license
"As he says himself, Homebrew is a successful product but not necessarily great computer science. He 'failed' a computer science question. "

Maybe Google is different but I usually need to do computer cine type stuff about one a year.I have used recursion on maybe 4 different occasions in my carreer, but that's the sort of thing that comes up regularly in coding tests. Why not test for things that are actually being used on the job?
Is this basically just taking a Fermi type estimation and making a paper out of it?

I was just thinking that I like doing those sorts of calculations, and given that so many people on the Internet profess to hate them, there should be an exploitable niche somewhere.
I think it's fair to say that men drive more powerful, larger cars(on average) than women do. So....they get into more accidents because the cars they drive are objectively more difficult to drive. [...] Penalizing a man in this situation because men as a group get into more accidents is absolutely unfair.

Oh, come on, do you really think insurance companies don't break out all the different factors? They're in a cutthroat business where every tiny margin they make over their competitors is a big advantage. But if they guess wrong, they'll cut premiums too aggressively and lose money on accident claims.

Car size and gender are both factors. It's possible they're partly correlated, but actuaries can still incorporate both factors into their models.

Charging higher premiums for men is fair if you only care about accident rates. If you feel it's a form of discrimination and want to level the playing field, that has to be done via government regulation.
> The best mangers I've known are the ones who are minimally involved. People who are given the space to make choices, be creative, and fail every so often, will often figure out how to manage themselves.

In those cases, did you feel you shared values with those managers? Or were they indifferent to your values, and just left you alone?
You are correct, Google trends is pretty much irrelevant here. You would be surprised by Gitosis (and many others you've dismissed). It's pretty much in every company I've worked in over the last 7 years. It's never well liked, but it works just fine. Most companies don't need bells and whistles that come with GUI based git installs, so they don't waste the money switching away to them.